Blaenycae Quarry

Overview

A small open-pit slate quarry in the Nantlle Valley, worked from around 1830 to the 1930s, using first a chain incline and later a Blondin cableway to lift slate from the pit, before eventually becoming part of the neighbouring Tal-y-sarn operation.

History

Blaenycae Quarry, a small open pit, commenced operations around 1830. Material was initially lifted from the pit by chain incline to a mill sited to the west, a system later replaced by a Blondin ropeway -- a cableway technology named after Charles Blondin, the tightrope walker famous for crossing the Niagara gorge in 1859, and installed here alongside the neighbouring Pen-yr-Orsedd quarry. At its peak the quarry employed around forty workers and produced roughly eight hundred tons of slate a year. It eventually became part of the Tal-y-sarn operation before closing during the 1930s. Unlike the large integrated enterprises at Bethesda, Llanberis and Blaenau Ffestiniog, the Nantlle Valley's slate quarries -- Blaenycae among them -- were characteristically run independently and on a much smaller scale, though the valley as a whole, with at least 37 operating quarries at one time, was still a world-leading slate producer during the 19th century.

Workings

Slate lifted from a small open pit first by chain incline and later by a Blondin ropeway, employing around forty workers at peak and producing roughly eight hundred tons of slate a year.

Closure

Closed during the 1930s, having by then become part of the Tal-y-sarn operation.

Abandoned workings can be dangerous — unstable ground, uncapped shafts, flooding and bad air are common even where a site looks safe from the surface. This entry describes history and general location only; it is not an access guide.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Blaenycae Quarry, a small open pit, commenced operations around 1830, initially lifting material by chain incline before later installing a Blondin ropeway, a cableway technology named after the tightrope walker Charles Blondin. ¹
• At its peak the quarry employed around forty workers and produced roughly eight hundred tons of slate a year, before eventually becoming part of the Tal-y-sarn operation and closing during the 1930s. ¹
• Unlike the large integrated enterprises at Bethesda, Llanberis and Blaenau Ffestiniog, the Nantlle Valley's slate quarries -- Blaenycae among them -- were run independently and on a much smaller scale, though the valley as a whole, with at least 37 operating quarries at one time, was still a world-leading slate producer in the 19th century. ²

Photographs & further reading

This page doesn't try to reproduce everything — these are the best original sources found for this mine.

Sources

1. (secondary) Blaen y Cae - Buddlepit Mine Database — Buddlepit Mine Database
2. (primary) Dyffryn Nantlle — Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales — Llechi Cymru / Wales Slate (Welsh Government)

Record created: 30 August 2026 · Last researched: 31 August 2026