A natural outcrop at the north-western extremity of Padarn lake, a traditional meeting-place for the Dinorwic quarrymen, where meetings of the North Wales Quarrymen’s Union (founded 1874) and other gatherings were held. Meetings were opened with a hymn, often Arglwydd Dduw Rhagluniaeth (‘Lord God of Providence’).
Statement of Significance:
A rocky outcrop within the Dinorwic Quarry mountain landscape, the site of meetings of the North Wales Quarrymen’s Union, a symbol of historic contestation between different social forces in the slate industry of north-west Wales. As an attribute of the interchange of human values in the growth and development of the trade union movement in the western world, it reflects the establishment of the (British) Trades Union Congress in 1868, the Knights of Labor in the USA in 1869 and the Bourse du Travail in France in 1887, but it is also an attribute of the quarrymen’s sense of their own Judaeo-Christian providential role in seeking out ‘high places’ for their meetings.
This site is part of the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales World Heritage Site, Component Part 2: Dinorwig Slate Quarry Mountain Landscape. Inscribed July 2020.
Sources:
H. Genders Boyd, RCAHMW, March 2022