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Cwmorthin Quarry is a slate quarry west of the village of Tanygrisiau, north Wales. Quarrying on the site started in 1810. In 1860 it was connected to the Ffestiniog Railway. In 1900 it was acquired by the nearby Oakeley Quarry and the two were connected underground. In 1970 it closed along with Oakeley. There was small scale working in the 1980s and 1990s, the mine finally closed in 1997. == History == Slate extraction began at Cwmorthin in 1810, when a small quarry was opened on the site by the Casson family who were also working the Diphwys Casson Quarry, further to the east. Two of the five Blaenau Ffestiniog slate veins outcropped near where the quarry started, and it is not known whether the early workings were on the Old Vein or the Back Vein, as all evidence has been destroyed by later workings. The veins sloped downwards at angles of between 20 and 45 degrees, and to avoid the expense of removing large volumes of the overlying rock, the quarry soon became a mine, as the chambers followed the vein below ground. This early quarrying lasted for about twenty years, but had ceased by 1830. In 1840, working began again, when John Edwards and his partner Magnes obtained a lease, which was transferred to W B Chorley from London later that year. Chorley's involvement with the quarry continued until about 1860. He employed Allen Searell (possibly Seale) as an Agent for the quarry in 1844, and correspondence between the two men is held by the library at Bangor University, formerly the University of North Wales. In the late 1850s, Chorley began to lose interest in the enterprise, and Searell moved on to the Hafon y Llan Quarry near Beddgelert. From about 1859, the quarry appears to have been worked by a group of men under an informal arrangement. They leased a wharf at Porthmadog harbour in 1860, until the Cwmorthin Slate Company was formed in January 1861. This had an authorised capital of £100,000, and the company bought the Cwmorthin Isaf estate and part of Tanygrisiau village on 25 July 1861. Work began on underground mining. At some point, the Cwmorthin Tramway was constructed to connect the quarry with the nearby Ffestiniog Railway at Tanygrisiau. Isherwood states that it was soon after the new company took over in 1861 but Boyd suggests that a survey was carried out in the mid-1840s, and that it was completed in 1850. It was mentioned in the 1850 edition of Cliffe's ''The Book of North Wales'', and the Ffestiniog Railway accounts recorded the first passage of loaded slate wagons down the line in that year. An existing siding at Tanygrisiau, which had served horse-drawn wagons from the quarry, was removed shortly afterwards. The first dressing mill, where the blocks of slate were split and dressed to form roofing slates, was situated on the eastern shore of Llyn Cwmorthin, and was known as Lake Mill. A second mill, the Cross Mill, was built a little further down the valley, as a result of which water from Llyn Cwmorthin could be used to feed a water wheel, which powered the dressing machinery. Two rope-worked inclined planes allowed the tramway to negotiate the difference in level between the mill and the Ffestiniog Railway. The connection of the final incline to the railway was deemed to be dangerous by a Board of Trade inspector in 1864, as there were no trap points to prevent runaway wagons running onto the main line. As a result, the Ffestiniog Railway had to install distant signals and a telegraph connection to the winding house at the incline summit. Trains were not allowed to run along the main line while the incline was in use. Output from the quarry steadily increased, from 350 tons in 1862, to 12,500 tons of finished slate in 1876. Some 96,000 tons of slates left the quarry between 1861 and 1876. Based on typical figures for the region, that 1 ton of finished material was produced from 10 tons of quarried rock, this would indicate that around 1 million tons of rock were extracted during this period. The waste rock was initially tipped around the edge of the two surface workings, known as the North and South Sinks, but was later tipped in a series of terraces to the east of the workings, which eventually covered up the South Sink. The quarry gained a reputation for poor working conditions and was known locally as "The Slaughterhouse". Between 1875 and 1893 there were 21 deaths in Cwmorthin out of a workforce of around 550. Following the passing of the Metalliferous Mines Act 1872, all mines were required to keep records of their operations, and to report fatal injuries, some details of the men and boys employed, and the output of the mine. Like many slate mines, Cwmorthin argued that it was a quarry, and that the law did not apply to them. Following a fatal accident in 1875, a test case was brought against them, and the enterprise was deemed to be a mine under the terms of the Act. The company went into liquidation shortly afterwards. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cwmorthin Quarry」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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