1. The History
Conglog quarry was a small enterprise situated to the north-west of Tanygrisiau, near Blaenau Ffestiniog in the Snowdonia area of North Wales. To the west of the better known Rhosydd quarry, it was worked between 1854 to 1910, and was operated by an individual, two partnerships and four separate companies over this period.
Prior to 1854, the land on which the Conglog quarry was established was part of Cwmorthin Ucha farm, and was owned by William Ormsby-Gore, whose son, the Conservative politician John Ormsby-Gore, became Lord Harlech in 1876. He granted a two-year lease (or ‘take note’) for the two men to extract minerals (slate), namely Robert Roberts and John Williams, both of Ffestiniog. Roberts was one of the surgeons at Oakeley quarry and became the proprietor. He provided the capital to enable quarrying to commence while Williams was a quarryman. The lease was renewed in 1856 and then again in 1863.
In 1866, only Roberts was named on another renewal, and he began trading as the Conglog Slate Company. The lease covered 177 acres, mainly to the north of the stream and the track that ran through the site to reach Rhosydd quarry. This turned in a 21-year lease, where he was required to pay 2 shillings per ton for rock removed from the site, with a minimum charge of £25 (i.e. 250 tons), and additional £2 per acre for any land used for tipping waste rock. The Rhosydd Quarry had been operating since 1853, and their quarry manager's house, Plas Cwmorthin, was located to the east of the Conglog site, the walls of which remain today. In 1866, they built a row of cottages known as Tan-yr-Allt, next the Conglog mill site, to house some of the Rhosydd workers and their families. In 1871 there was a dispute with Rhosydd over land in the south-west corner of the leased land although agreement was eventually reached.
In order to develop the quarry, Roberts sub-let part of the land to W H B Kempe and T M Matthews from Devon. They paid £900 plus £25 per year for the lease, with an additional £2 per acre for any land they used for tipping, and one-twelfth of the value of any slate which they produced. In 1873, Conglog Slate and Slab Company Ltd was set up with working capital of £40,000, derived from 4,000 shares sold at £10 each. Kempe and Matthews sold their 21-year lease to the company for £25,000, and then used the money to buy 2,000 shares. Many of the remaining shares were held by residents of Devon. The two men then sold 375 of their shares to Joseph Kellow, who became the agent and quarry engineer, and whose nephew Moses was responsible for the developments at Croesor quarry from 1895. Kempe and Matthews then developed the underground workings, and Kellow recommended that £15,000 of the capital should be used for this purpose.
Matthews left the undertaking in 1873 and assigned his part of the lease to another shareholder called Edward Betteley, who in turn sold out to a manganese mine proprietor called Charles John Sims. Roberts left in 1874, assigned his part of the lease to Kempe and Sims. The nearby Cwmorthin quarry, further down the valley, had been served by the Cwmorthin Tramway since 1850, which descended via the Tan y Muriau and Village inclines to connect to the Ffestiniog Railway. The tramway was extended up the valley in 1874, to reach the Conglog mill. However, things didn’t quite go to plan at Conglog and in 1881 the company was wound-up. The man in charge of this was Thomas Horswill from Tavistock in Devon. He discovered that Kempe and Matthews had never assigned their original lease to the company. As Kempe had died, and Matthews was "insane", this presented a major issue. Somehow though he managed to resolve the issue, selling the lease to two of the shareholders, Betteley and Gillow, for £850. Another company, the New Conglog Slate and Slab Company Ltd, was formed, and bought the lease from Betteley and Gillow for £2,000. The capital was raised by issuing 80 shares valued at £25 each, and Gillow bought 65 of them. Horswill became the secretary of the new company, but after just four years, he recommended in 1885 that this too should be wound up. Roberts, who still held the primary lease, tried to help by offering to alter the lease’s terms in 1886, but it is unclear whether this happened. What is clear, however was that in 1889, the 21-year lapsed, and Roberts negotiated with the company for its renewal and extension. Although they agreed, the company had still not received a lease after 18 months, and finally went into liquidation in 1891. Roberts died the following year and around that time newspaper advertisements for the sale indicated that the company had assets of £2,011, £200 of stock, and liabilities of £3,621. No buyers were found, and subsequently the quarry was abandoned, without any machinery being removed.
All was not quite lost, however, as Ronald Robert Hamilton Lochart Ross (some name!) took the quarry over in 1895. Trading as Glyn Ffestiniog Quarry and taking out a 21-year lease (along with a 7-year lease on the Cwmorthin tramway with options to renew that for two further 7-year terms) he struggled on for just six years, when in 1901 he handed the quarry over to a consortium of six quarrymen from nearby Tanygrisiau. Traded under the moniker Glyn Ffestiniog Slate and Slab Quarry, they acted as an informal partnership. When Ross surrendered his lease in 1903, one of the six quarrymen, Cadwaladr Roberts, acted as agent. Documents indicate that the last load of slate to leave the quarry was in 1909, and it closed a year later in 1910.
Map from a 1919 O/S map of the quarry:
The nearby Capel y Gorlan in better days:
And Plas Cwmorthin, the Rhosydd Quarry manager’s house, built in 1860 and pictured sometime in the 1870s:
2. The Explore
So last time I was here last August, I explored the surface remains on the way up to Rhosydd quarry (see report HERE ). I drew a blank in terms of getting underground and realised I missed a trick here as there are some small-scale, but interesting, workings spread over four levels (A, B, C and D). I previously poked around Adit C, but it had quite a bit of water in it and appeared to end in a collapse. However, on returning with waders, rather than wellies, and armed with the knowledge that I needed to find Adit B just below the path up to Rhosydd, this delivered probably the best explore of this visit to North Wales.
Conglong may not have the massive scale of some of the workings of the nearby Rhosydd or Cwmorthin, but it ticked all my boxes; drives with rails still in situ, lovely caverns and some cracking mine carts. So overall, a highly recommended little slate mine well worthy of an hour or so of your time.
3. The Pictures
It’s a fab walk up the valley to Conglog…first past Cwmorthin:
Then the old Capel y Gorlan:
Some surface remains and the waste slopes of Rhosydd:
The miner’s track rises behind the buildings:
Here you can see, from Left to Right, the openings to caverns C1, C2, C4 and C5:
So up the track we go and on to the entrance to Floor B, which is far from obvious:
And, initially, very wet:
And on to the first small chamber to the left-hand-side (B1):
Big spears of slate:
And a rusty hook:
This looks like a rails points:
On we push:
And on to the collapse, paying attention to the top right:
Once through the collapse, you come to the biggest chamber, B4:
Collapse or mined slate?
No too sure how this got here like that:
Back of chamber B4:
Firstly to the left:
One very rusty box:
And rusty hooks in the roof:
If you carry along the main drive you come to a dead end:
Conglog quarry was a small enterprise situated to the north-west of Tanygrisiau, near Blaenau Ffestiniog in the Snowdonia area of North Wales. To the west of the better known Rhosydd quarry, it was worked between 1854 to 1910, and was operated by an individual, two partnerships and four separate companies over this period.
Prior to 1854, the land on which the Conglog quarry was established was part of Cwmorthin Ucha farm, and was owned by William Ormsby-Gore, whose son, the Conservative politician John Ormsby-Gore, became Lord Harlech in 1876. He granted a two-year lease (or ‘take note’) for the two men to extract minerals (slate), namely Robert Roberts and John Williams, both of Ffestiniog. Roberts was one of the surgeons at Oakeley quarry and became the proprietor. He provided the capital to enable quarrying to commence while Williams was a quarryman. The lease was renewed in 1856 and then again in 1863.
In 1866, only Roberts was named on another renewal, and he began trading as the Conglog Slate Company. The lease covered 177 acres, mainly to the north of the stream and the track that ran through the site to reach Rhosydd quarry. This turned in a 21-year lease, where he was required to pay 2 shillings per ton for rock removed from the site, with a minimum charge of £25 (i.e. 250 tons), and additional £2 per acre for any land used for tipping waste rock. The Rhosydd Quarry had been operating since 1853, and their quarry manager's house, Plas Cwmorthin, was located to the east of the Conglog site, the walls of which remain today. In 1866, they built a row of cottages known as Tan-yr-Allt, next the Conglog mill site, to house some of the Rhosydd workers and their families. In 1871 there was a dispute with Rhosydd over land in the south-west corner of the leased land although agreement was eventually reached.
In order to develop the quarry, Roberts sub-let part of the land to W H B Kempe and T M Matthews from Devon. They paid £900 plus £25 per year for the lease, with an additional £2 per acre for any land they used for tipping, and one-twelfth of the value of any slate which they produced. In 1873, Conglog Slate and Slab Company Ltd was set up with working capital of £40,000, derived from 4,000 shares sold at £10 each. Kempe and Matthews sold their 21-year lease to the company for £25,000, and then used the money to buy 2,000 shares. Many of the remaining shares were held by residents of Devon. The two men then sold 375 of their shares to Joseph Kellow, who became the agent and quarry engineer, and whose nephew Moses was responsible for the developments at Croesor quarry from 1895. Kempe and Matthews then developed the underground workings, and Kellow recommended that £15,000 of the capital should be used for this purpose.
Matthews left the undertaking in 1873 and assigned his part of the lease to another shareholder called Edward Betteley, who in turn sold out to a manganese mine proprietor called Charles John Sims. Roberts left in 1874, assigned his part of the lease to Kempe and Sims. The nearby Cwmorthin quarry, further down the valley, had been served by the Cwmorthin Tramway since 1850, which descended via the Tan y Muriau and Village inclines to connect to the Ffestiniog Railway. The tramway was extended up the valley in 1874, to reach the Conglog mill. However, things didn’t quite go to plan at Conglog and in 1881 the company was wound-up. The man in charge of this was Thomas Horswill from Tavistock in Devon. He discovered that Kempe and Matthews had never assigned their original lease to the company. As Kempe had died, and Matthews was "insane", this presented a major issue. Somehow though he managed to resolve the issue, selling the lease to two of the shareholders, Betteley and Gillow, for £850. Another company, the New Conglog Slate and Slab Company Ltd, was formed, and bought the lease from Betteley and Gillow for £2,000. The capital was raised by issuing 80 shares valued at £25 each, and Gillow bought 65 of them. Horswill became the secretary of the new company, but after just four years, he recommended in 1885 that this too should be wound up. Roberts, who still held the primary lease, tried to help by offering to alter the lease’s terms in 1886, but it is unclear whether this happened. What is clear, however was that in 1889, the 21-year lapsed, and Roberts negotiated with the company for its renewal and extension. Although they agreed, the company had still not received a lease after 18 months, and finally went into liquidation in 1891. Roberts died the following year and around that time newspaper advertisements for the sale indicated that the company had assets of £2,011, £200 of stock, and liabilities of £3,621. No buyers were found, and subsequently the quarry was abandoned, without any machinery being removed.
All was not quite lost, however, as Ronald Robert Hamilton Lochart Ross (some name!) took the quarry over in 1895. Trading as Glyn Ffestiniog Quarry and taking out a 21-year lease (along with a 7-year lease on the Cwmorthin tramway with options to renew that for two further 7-year terms) he struggled on for just six years, when in 1901 he handed the quarry over to a consortium of six quarrymen from nearby Tanygrisiau. Traded under the moniker Glyn Ffestiniog Slate and Slab Quarry, they acted as an informal partnership. When Ross surrendered his lease in 1903, one of the six quarrymen, Cadwaladr Roberts, acted as agent. Documents indicate that the last load of slate to leave the quarry was in 1909, and it closed a year later in 1910.
Map from a 1919 O/S map of the quarry:
The nearby Capel y Gorlan in better days:
And Plas Cwmorthin, the Rhosydd Quarry manager’s house, built in 1860 and pictured sometime in the 1870s:
2. The Explore
So last time I was here last August, I explored the surface remains on the way up to Rhosydd quarry (see report HERE ). I drew a blank in terms of getting underground and realised I missed a trick here as there are some small-scale, but interesting, workings spread over four levels (A, B, C and D). I previously poked around Adit C, but it had quite a bit of water in it and appeared to end in a collapse. However, on returning with waders, rather than wellies, and armed with the knowledge that I needed to find Adit B just below the path up to Rhosydd, this delivered probably the best explore of this visit to North Wales.
Conglong may not have the massive scale of some of the workings of the nearby Rhosydd or Cwmorthin, but it ticked all my boxes; drives with rails still in situ, lovely caverns and some cracking mine carts. So overall, a highly recommended little slate mine well worthy of an hour or so of your time.
3. The Pictures
It’s a fab walk up the valley to Conglog…first past Cwmorthin:
Then the old Capel y Gorlan:
Some surface remains and the waste slopes of Rhosydd:
The miner’s track rises behind the buildings:
Here you can see, from Left to Right, the openings to caverns C1, C2, C4 and C5:
So up the track we go and on to the entrance to Floor B, which is far from obvious:
And, initially, very wet:
And on to the first small chamber to the left-hand-side (B1):
Big spears of slate:
And a rusty hook:
This looks like a rails points:
On we push:
And on to the collapse, paying attention to the top right:
Once through the collapse, you come to the biggest chamber, B4:
Collapse or mined slate?
No too sure how this got here like that:
Back of chamber B4:
Firstly to the left:
One very rusty box:
And rusty hooks in the roof:
If you carry along the main drive you come to a dead end:
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