Background
- Listing: Grade 2
- Date of building: 1860s-1920s
- Pen Yr Orsedd Quarry Gallery
- Pen Yr Orsedd Quarry Virtual Tour
These workshops, part of a complex that includes offices and barracks. The site lies in a spectacular setting looking down onto Llyn Nantlle Lake and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. The offices were built in stages, firstly in 1863 when the quarry was bought by WA Darbishire and Company. They were substantially modernised to make the most of new water and steam technologies, and then again between 1899 and 1907.
The offices occupy a single storey T-block of coursed slate rubble construction. The earlier workshops are in two halves, one of which has slate roofing and the other a corrugated iron roof and elegant slate rubble buttressing. Both are metal-framed buildings hung or clad with slate slabs. A substantial amount of the workshops' original machinery and fittings have survived intact and include 'tuyere' hearths, woodworking equipment, storage racks, an overhead gantry crane and two railway lines with a small locomotive table.
The quarry finally closed in 1997. Despite the condition of the buildings, the site as a whole is regarded as being a remarkably intact example of a slate quarry of that era.
Restoration of the site will see the buildings return to use as working facilities. The workshops will provide a training and workshop facility for the repair, replication and manufacture of heritage engineering. Everyday income may be generated by the manufacture of decorative reproduction ironwork. This project will integrate training and employment, marrying traditional and modern skills.
