History
Aberllefenni Slate Quarry may have started operating as a slate mine as early as the 14th century. The earliest confirmed date of operating is 1500 when the local house Plas Aberllefenni was roofed in slates from the mine. In the seventeenth century the Lloyd family owned the quarry, and passed to the Campbell family in 1725. In 1806 John Davies gained control which passed to the executor of his estate Pryce Jones in 1824. In 1859 the quarry was sold to Colonel Robert Davies Jones, trading under the name Aberllefenni Slate Quarries.
By 1879 the quarry employed 169 men and produced nearly 4700 tons of finished slate and slab. The number of employees peaked in 1890 at 190.Production fluctuated by was trending downwards during the 1890s and 1900s. In 1908 the number of employees fell below 100. The First World War saw a downturn in production at Aberllefenni as in the whole industry. After the war there was a short boom into the early 1920s, but then prices of slate began to fall.
By the early 1930s the industry was in a deep depression, with a 3 day week being worked for part of 1933. In 1935 the quarry was leased by Sir Henry Haydn Jones, owner of the Bryn Eglwys quarry near Abergynolwyn. The Second World War brought further drops in production, with the number of men employed falling from 120 in 1939 to 40 in 1944.
After the war, the industry continued a slow decline, with industrial action closing the quarry for part of 1947. During the 1950s only about 40 men were working, all in Foel Grochan quarry. In 1956, brothers Gwilym and Dewi Lloyd took over the quarry under the name Wincilate Ltd. Rapid modernization and mechanisation of the quarry allowed it to continue to produce slate into the 1990s. Aberllefenni was the last working slate mine south of Blaenau Ffestiniog.
However by 2002 it was no longer economical to extract slate at Aberllefenni and the mine closed. The slate mill continues to operate to this day, processing slate imported from Blaenau Ffestiniog and Penrhyn. Small pieces of Aberllefenni slate are still available for name plates.
Read more about this topic: Aberllefenni Slate Quarry
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)