Qualla: Cilgwyn Quarry https://qualla.com/cilgwyn-quarry en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/v/cilgwyn-quarry-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Cilgwyn Quarry https://qualla.com/cilgwyn-quarry Cilgwyn Quarry: Introduction https://qualla.com/cilgwyn-quarry/ Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. In 1842 a banker from Hertfordshire packed his bags, left the country, and abandoned a slate quarry on the north edge of the Nantlle Valley with debts of ten thousand pounds. He died in exile a year later. George Alfred Muskett was Member of Parliament for St Albans, a respected man with a respectable address, and his ruin made the quarrymen of Cilgwyn so destitute they were reduced to selling slates door to door, bypassing the company that owed them their wages. The strange thing about this episode is that it was not even close to being the most interesting thing that had ever happened at Cilgwyn - a slate workings so old that Edward I was reputed to have slept under one of its roofs.

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/v/cilgwyn-quarry-wp/gckv-cilgwyn-quarry-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Cilgwyn Quarry: The Oldest Slate in Britain https://qualla.com/cilgwyn-quarry/ Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Cilgwyn was already in use in the twelfth century, hundreds of years before slate became a mass-market roofing product. Welsh tradition holds that during Edward I's conquest of Wales in the 1280s, the English king lodged in a house whose roof had come from this quarry - a story t...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/v/cilgwyn-quarry-wp/gckv-cilgwyn-quarry-the-oldest-slate-in-britain.mp3 0:06 2 full Cilgwyn Quarry: The Banker's Folly https://qualla.com/cilgwyn-quarry/ Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. The corporate era was a disaster. The Cilgwyn and Cefn Du Slate Company took over the operation in the 1820s and collapsed in 1831. George Alfred Muskett, the St Albans banker and Liberal MP, then bought the quarry as an investment - a fashionable choice for the kind of speculato...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/v/cilgwyn-quarry-wp/gckv-cilgwyn-quarry-the-bankers-folly.mp3 0:06 3 full Cilgwyn Quarry: Three Big Pits https://qualla.com/cilgwyn-quarry/ Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. By the 1850s Cilgwyn was working again. Out of the dozens of small pits that had pocked the hillside emerged three big ones: Gloddfa Glitiau in the north-east, Old Cilgwyn in the west, and Veingoch in the south-east. By 1882 the quarry was producing 7,430 tons of finished slate a...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/v/cilgwyn-quarry-wp/gckv-cilgwyn-quarry-three-big-pits.mp3 0:06 4 full Cilgwyn Quarry: Cilgwyn the Locomotive https://qualla.com/cilgwyn-quarry/ Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. The diesel age came in the 1930s. A Ruston & Hornsby works number 175414, built in 1936, took up duty at Cilgwyn that year and worked the quarry's wagons until 1940. It survived - many small industrial locomotives did not - and now lives in preservation at the National Slate Muse...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/v/cilgwyn-quarry-wp/gckv-cilgwyn-quarry-cilgwyn-the-locomotive.mp3 0:06 5 full Cilgwyn Quarry: The Pits Today https://qualla.com/cilgwyn-quarry/ Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Stand on the north edge of the Nantlle Valley today and you look down into the wreckage of a thousand years of work. The pits hold water now. The huge spoil tips climb the hillside above them, brutally angular against the green Welsh hills - the same tips that an underwater treat...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/v/cilgwyn-quarry-wp/gckv-cilgwyn-quarry-the-pits-today.mp3 0:06 6 full