Tanygrisiau - Industrial Past and Present

Industrial Past and Present

Tanygrisiau, or more properly 'Tan y grisiau', is Welsh for "below the steps", referring to the stepped cliffs above the village. Tanygrisiau was famous for its slate mining, producing a high quality black slate that was used across the world.

Tanygrisiau railway station is on the famous Ffestiniog Railway, a narrow gauge railway built to carry slate from the mines down to the sea at Porthmadog where it was shipped all around the world, mostly for use in roofing.

The village was the site of a near disaster on Christmas Day 1918. At the time when all the inhabitants of the village were in chapel the mine workings collapsed. Had this collapse taken place a few hours earlier, many hundreds of miners, newly returned from the First World War, would have died crushed under millions of tons of rock. Many of the inhabitants put this down to divine intervention.

The nearby Ffestiniog power station, the high Stwlan Dam and Llyn Ystradau, colloquially known as Tanygrisiau Reservoir, are part of a pumped storage hydroelectricity installation. Much nearer the railway station is a waterfall on the Afon Cwmorthin and below the falls, and powered by a different water source, is a very small hydro-electric power station.

The closure of the slate mines during the late 1970s led to massive depopulation of the area from which it has only recently (2005) begun to recover.

Tanygrisiau has close links with the regiment of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.