© Mapbox · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Boundary data © Cadw
Cwmorthin slate quarry is a significant nineteenth-century slate extraction complex located in the Conwy Valley in North Wales. The site comprises extensive quarrying remains, associated tramway infrastructure, and ancillary features that document the intensive mechanised slate industry of the period. The quarry operated during the height of Welsh slate production and represents the industrial landscape characteristic of Snowdonia's quarrying heritage. The surviving physical remains include quarry faces, waste tips, and fragmentary evidence of the railway and transport systems that connected the extraction site to wider distribution networks, making it an important archaeological record of Victorian-era industrial organisation and slate working practices.
Cwmorthin slate quarry, mine, railway and ancillary features is a scheduled monument protected by Cadw under reference CN425. View the official record →
Cwmorthin slate quarry is a significant nineteenth-century slate extraction complex located in the Conwy Valley in North Wales. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by Cadw under reference CN425.
Cwmorthin slate quarry, mine, railway and ancillary features dates from the industrial period, and is classified as a quarry. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
Cwmorthin slate quarry, mine, railway and ancillary features is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by Cadw — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in Wales. The official designation reference is CN425.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Roman Practice Camp 440m WSW of Braich-Ddu (7.9 km), Enclosed Hut Circle Settlement at Dolbelydr (8.8 km), Enclosed Hut Circle Settlement South East of Yr Onen (9.1 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 13 strands of Cwmorthin slate quarry, mine, railway and ancillary features's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Cwmorthin slate quarry, mine, railway and ancillary features stands on Arenig Rocks (Undifferentiated), bedrock that formed in the Arenigian. The rock here is mudstone, siltstone and sandstone.