Llechwedd Slate Caverns
Encyclopedia
Blaenau Ffestiniog
Blaenau Ffestiniog is a town in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. It has a population of 5,000, including Llan Ffestiniog, which makes it the third largest town in Gwynedd, behind Caernarfon & Porthmadog. Although the population reached 12,000 at the peak of the slate industry, the population fell due to...
, Gwynedd
Gwynedd
Gwynedd is a county in north-west Wales, named after the old Kingdom of Gwynedd. Although the second biggest in terms of geographical area, it is also one of the most sparsely populated...
, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. Visitors can travel on the Miners' Tramway or descend into the Deep Mine, via a funicular railway, to explore the former Llechwedd slate quarry
Llechwedd quarry
Llechwedd quarry is a major slate quarry in the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, north Wales. At its peak in 1884 it produced 23,788 tons of finished slate per year and had 513 employees. It continues to produce slate on a limited scale and is the location of the Llechwedd Slate Caverns tourist...
and learn how slate
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...
was extracted and processed and about the lives of the miners.
On the Miners' Tramway (opened in 1972) visitors ride for 800 metres through tunnels and caverns on a train hauled by a battery-electric locomotive.
The Deep Mine (opened in 1979) is accessed by a steep funicular passenger railway, with a gradient of 1:1.8 or 30°. In its vast chambers, from which the rock has been extracted, sound and light is used to tell the story of a 12-year-old boy who once worked in the mines here. The Deep Mine is the steepest passenger railway in the UK.
Llechwedd Slate Caverns have been listed as one of the top ten places to visit by North Wales Tourism, the tourism board for this area. It is also claimed to be "winner of every major tourism award".