Welsh Slate Museum
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The Welsh Slate Museum is located at Gilfach Ddu in the 19th century workshops of the now disused Dinorwic slate quarry, within the Padarn Country Park, Llanberis.
These workshops, which served all the needs of the quarry and its locomotives, were built in 1870 on land created from the continuous tipping of spoil from the adjacent Vivian Quarry, and as a replacement for the store sheds which were previously sited there. Rail access to the works was by both 2 ft (610 mm) gauge (the quarry gauge) and 4 ft (1219 mm) gauge (that of the Padarn Railway which carried the slate from the quarry to Port Dinorwic). Rails also entered the main yard through the main entrance.
The museum is now connected to the nearby village of Llanberis by the Llanberis Lake Railway.
The museum reopened after receiving a £1.6 million grant from the National Lottery Fund and now has innovative displays featuring Victorian slateworkers' cottages that once stood at Blaenau Ffestiniog. They were taken down and re-erected here. As well as many interesting exhibits, it has the multi-media display, To Steal a Mountain, showing the lives and work of the men who quarried slate here.
The museum also has the largest working waterwheel in the United Kingdom, which is available for viewing via several walkways. Close to the museum is the partly restored Vivian incline, a gravity balance incline where loaded slate wagons haul empty wagons back up.
[edit] External links
- Welsh Slate Museum
- Map sources for Welsh Slate Museum
National Museum Wales: National Museum Cardiff • National History Museum • Big Pit • National Woollen Museum • Roman Legionary Museum • Welsh Slate Museum • National Waterfront Museum
Other museums: Bersham Ironworks • Brecknock Museum • Carmarthenshire County Museum • Cefn Coed Colliery Museum • Celtica • Ceredigion Museum • Chepstow Museum • Dylan Thomas Boathouse • Dylan Thomas Centre • Glynn Vivian Art Gallery • Kidwelly Industrial Museum • Llancaiach Fawr • Llandrindod Wells Museum • Llanidloes Museum • MOMA, Wales • Narrow Gauge Railway Museum • Newport Museum • Newtown Textile Museum • Parc Howard Museum • Pembrokeshire Motor Museum • Pendine Museum of Speed • Plantasia • Powysland Museum • Roman Legionary Museum • South Wales Miners Museum • Swansea Museum • Welch Regiment Museum
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