Qualla: Porth Wen Brickworks

Porth Wen Brickworks: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Mawdsley, CC BY-SA 2.0. Three brick beehive kilns stand on the ledge above the cove. Their domed roofs are still mostly intact - circular brick structures bound with rusting iron bands, each big enough to walk into through a narrow blocked-up doorway. Beside them rises a tall chimney, the storage hoppers, the moulding shed, the boiler house with the remains of a five-drum Stirling boiler still in place. A gravity-powered incline tramway descends from the quartzite quarries above to the works, and from the works down to the quay where ships once moored to take on cargoes of finished bricks. Production ceased somewhere between 1924 and 1949 - sources differ on which - and Porth Wen brickworks has been sliding back into the cliff ever since. The sea has begun to take the lower buildings. The cliffs are crumbling. What survives is one of the most photogenic industrial ruins anywhere on the British coast.

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Image: Richard Mawdsley | CC BY-SA 2.0

Porth Wen Brickworks: White Bay and the Quartzite

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Iain Macaulay, CC BY-SA 2.0. Porth Wen means White Bay - the name probably comes from the pale quartzite cliffs above the cove. The brickworks sits on the western side of the bay, in the community of Llanbadrig, 2 kilometres west of Porth Llechog and 3 kilometres north-east of Cemaes. Charles E Tidy built th...

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Image: Iain Macaulay | CC BY-SA 2.0

Porth Wen Brickworks: The Tramway and the Mill

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The brickmaking process began at two quarries on the cliff above the works. Stone was cut, broken to portable size, and lowered to the works by an incline tramway. The winding house at the top of the incline held two lateral stone walls supporting a square drive shaft on bearings...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Porth Wen Brickworks: Beehive Kilns

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The shaped bricks dried in the drying sheds, then went into one of the three circular down-draught kilns. Down-draught kilns - sometimes called beehive or Newcastle kilns - are domed structures that pull the heat down through the stacked bricks before drawing it up the chimney, w...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Porth Wen Brickworks: Coast as Museum

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cadw designated Porth Wen Brickworks a scheduled monument in 1986, classifying it as a post-medieval industrial brickworks. The Anglesey Coastal Path passes the site, though reaching the ruins themselves requires a careful scramble down the cliff path - there is no official acces...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0