Blaen-y-cae Quarry is located on the south side of Mynydd y Cilgwyn, to the west of Nantlle village. It is a small open pit working which started in about 1820. At its peak the quarry employed about 40 men producing some 800 tons per annum. Material was raised by rope haulage to a mill to the west of the pit, finished product sent down the lower part of the westerly Cilgwyn incline to the Nantlle railway. There survives a two-cylinder blondin ropeway winch engine of c.1910 built by Henderson's of Aberdeen overlooking the quarry pit, along with the remains of the blondin masts associated with it (still extant in 1996). The boiler has long gone but the feed pipe remains. It is typical of the steam winders introduced to the Nantlle area from 1898 onwards. Other remains include the dry pit, vestiges of mill and some other buildings, and tramroad formations.
The quarry is depicted on the Ordnance Survey County series 25-inch map (Caernarvonshire XXI.9 1889, 1900), but is not named as Blaen-y-cae Quarry until the third edition, dated 1916. It eventually became part of Tal-y-sarn but closed during the 1930s.
Sources:
A.J.Richards, A Gazeteer of the Welsh Slate Industry (1991), p.46.
David Gwyn, Welsh Slate: The Archaeology and History of an Industry (RCAHMW, 2015).
David Leighton, RCAHMW, 12 January 2015.
2.
The remains of a steam-powered blondin aerial ropeway system at the relict Blaen y Cae Slate Quarry in Nantlle represents a form of technology imported from the freestone industry of Scotland found in several places in the slate industry of north-west Wales but which is particularly associated with this area. They reflect the need to raise slate and waste rock from deep pits, and the greater flexibility that these catenary ropeway systems offered over the earlier, locally-evolved, chain inclines, which required anchorages on lofty bastions for fixed chains. The Blaen y Cae blondin provides a contrast with the electrically-driven blondin systems at Pen yr Orsedd Quarry (33734) and with the archaeology of the chain incline bastions at Dorothea Quarry (40539). It also provides a contrast with the other surviving steam engine in the valley, the Dorothea beam engine (26409), in an industrial environment where water-power was limited, and costly coal-fired machinery a necessity.
This site is part of the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales World Heritage Site, Component Part 3: Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape. Inscribed July 2020.
Sources:
Louise Barker & Dr David Gwyn, March 2018. Slate Landscapes of North-West Wales World Heritage Bid Statements of Significance. (Unpublished Report: Project 401b for Gwynedd Archaeological Trust)
Tirwedd Llechi Gogledd Orllewin Cymru / The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales. Nomination as a World heritage Site (Nomination Document, January 2020)
Wales Slate World Heritage Site https://www.llechi.cymru/
H. Genders Boyd, RCAHMW, January 2022