A row of four, three room dwellings built of unsawn slate slabs and accessed by a central doorway with internal doorways through the crosswalls into the other rooms. Each room is of the same size 4m x 4m with a window in the south wall. There is no evidence for any hearths and some rooms display evidence of slate flooring. In places the walls surivie up to their original single storey height. Added onto the east end of the row is a weighbridge-house, roofed with untrimmed slabs supported on unsawn timbers and an early structue, possibly a kitchen joins the west end of the range. To the north of the west end of the row is a stable, a large monopitch structure with a privy immediately to its east.

These barracks are situated on level 3 of the quarry, the top main working level, opposite a row of gwaliau and near open workings. The path from Rhyd Ddu through Bwlch y Ddwy Elor leads to them. They are built partly into the hillside, partly on made up ground of slate waste, and are orientated east-west.

The barracks were in use in 1865 when the Mining Journal speaks of barracks for about fifty. The 1871 census for the paraish gives three residents, a slate miner, a slate quarry labourer and a stonemason, all married staying by themselves in the barracks.

Louise Barker, RCAHMW, July 2014

Sources:

Notes from an upland survey conducted by Archaeophysica during 2005-6
Gwynedd Archaeological Trust, Report No. 252: Gwynedd Slate Quarries. Appendix 1 - Archaeological and Documentary Data, pg 115.