Quarrymen's Houses - National Slate Museum - Snowdonia, Wales.
N 53° 07.283 W 004° 06.899
30U E 425384 N 5886354
A row of four quarrymen's houses, furnished as they would of been in 1861, 1901 & 1969. The fourth house offers interactive learning facilities for schools. The relocated cottages are on display in the National Slate Museum, Llanberis, North Wales.
Waymark Code: WMP2B2
Location: North Wales, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 06/15/2015
Views: 3
Step back in time at the National Slate Museum, and uncover the secrets of slate and the people who quarried it here from the 1800s to 1969.
Shadowed by towering slate mountains, the Museum is housed in the industrial Victorian workshops that once serviced and maintained the enormous Dinorwig slate quarry above it.
One of the main attractions, at the Museum are The Quarrymen's cottages one furnished as it would of been in 1861, another 1901 and another in 1969.
The cottages were relocated from Fronhaul in Tanygrisiau, near Blaenau Ffestiniog, to the National Slate Museum, Llanberris, North Wales.
"Many quarrymen lived in this area: "The town possesses no attractions for tourists, except such as wish to explore quarries," says a late Victorian guidebook dismissively. It also mentions the "colossal slate-heaps" there at that time (Baddeley and Ward 128, 168). In more recent days, these typical two-up, two-down cottages were condemned in situ as no longer inhabitable, and then moved and rebuilt in the late 1990s as representative workers' housing at the National Slate Museum in Llanberis. Each house is decorated in the style of a different period of the quarrying industry, but the row as a whole was first recorded in the census of 1861." Text source: (
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"Commercial Quarrying began at Dinorwig in the early 19th century. Railways worked by dozens of small steam locomotives transport the slate from Dinorwig to the sea at a harbour known as Port Dinorwic. The quarry closed in 1969 and is now a major tourist attraction.
The National Slate Museum ensures the 3000 men who once worked the quarries are remembered as do the quarry workings which have laid open the side of the Elidir mountain nearby.
The National Slate Museum holds one of the largest water wheels built by Victorian industrialists. The De Winton company of Caernarfon built the 15.4 metre diameter wheel, in 1870. Water to power the wheel was piped down from the slopes of Snowdon in cast iron pipes and its power drove the machinery to produce slates for roof all over Industrial Britain. It remained in operation until 1925, when a smaller, more efficient model substituted it. Such is progress!" Text Source: (
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Address:
National Slate Museum, Llanberis, Gwynedd, LL55 4TY
Hours of Operation:
Easter–October: Open 10am-5pm daily.
November–Easter: Open 10am-4pm Sunday-Friday.