North Wales’ slate quarrying history dates back more than 1,800 years, with slate used to build parts of the Roman fort in Segontium in Caernarfon, and in King Edward I's castle at Conwy during his conquest of Wales.
In 1787 the ‘Great New Quarry’ of Dinorwig was opened on the slopes between the present village of Dinorwig and Llyn Peris.
But it was with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century that the slate industry really took off.
As small villages such as Manchester exploded into large towns and then cities with the coming of mills and factories, there was an enormous demand for slates to roof the long terraces of houses built as homes for the workers – as well as the foundries and factories themselves.
By the 1870s Dinorwig Quarry employed more than 3,000 men and slate had become one of Wales' most important industries.
Wales produced over four-fifths of all British slates in this period, with Caernarfonshire the biggest producer among all Welsh counties.
In 1882, the county's quarries produced more than 280,000 tons of finished roofing slates, and in 1898 the slate trade in Wales as a whole reached its peak with 17,000 men producing 485,000 tons of slate.
Among them was the Penrhyn Quarry near Bethesda, the Dinorwic Quarry near Llanberis, the Nantlle Valley quarries, and Blaenau Ffestiniog, where the slate was mined rather than quarried.
Penrhyn and Dinorwig were the two largest slate quarries in the world, and the Oakeley mine at Blaenau Ffestiniog was the largest slate mine in the world.
A bitter industrial dispute at the Penrhyn Quarry between 1900 and 1903 marked the beginning of its decline, and the First World War saw a great reduction in the number of men employed in the industry.
The Great Depression and Second World War led to the closure of many smaller quarries, and competition from other roofing materials, particularly tiles, resulted in the closure of most of the larger quarries in the 1960s and 1970s.
Slate production continues on a much-reduced scale.
On 28 July 2021, the slate landscape of northwest Wales was awarded the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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