Mines in Conwy

Conwy's mining history is unusually varied for its size. Great Orme, above Llandudno, holds the largest prehistoric copper mine yet discovered anywhere in the world, worked from the Bronze Age using stone hammers and bone tools; Cae Coch, in the hills above Trefriw, is Wales's only sulphur mine, prized enough in wartime that it once supplied over half the UK's entire pyrites output. Between them, the two sites span mining in the region from the earliest prehistoric metalworking to 20th-century wartime industry.