A photographic exhibition at the National Slate Museum looks at the relationship between slate and the sea.

As part of the 2018 celebration of Wales’ Year of the Sea, the exhibition – with photos from the museum’s own collections and a selection from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales as well as Gwynedd and Conwy Archives Service – recalls some of the ports which were important to the slate industry in Wales. In particular to the exportation of slate around the world including Porth Penrhyn, Bangor, Slate Quay, Caernarfon, Porthmadog, Y Felinheli (Port Dinorwic) and Aberdyfi.

In 1882 the Welsh slate trade produced 280,000 tons of slate. This rose to 485,000 tons by 1898.

Worldwide slate exports from Welsh ports were enormous and included the West Indies (114 tons) Argentina (404 tons) Channel Islands (580 tons) British South Africa (290 tons) Belgium (431 tons) Germany (41,000 tons) Denmark (3,500 tons) and Australia (5,500 tons).

The busy ports serving the slate industry included Porthmadog where initially, slate was carted from Blaenau Ffestiniog down to the quays along the Afon Dwyryd, then boated to Porthmadog for transfer to seagoing vessels.

The rapidly expanding cities of England needed high quality roofing slate, which gave rise to railways to transport them to the new port by tramway from the quarries around Ffestiniog and district.

The Ffestiniog Railway opened in 1836, followed by the Croesor Tramway in 1864 and the Gorseddau Tramway in 1856, and by 1873 over 116,000 tons were exported through Porthmadog in more than a 1,000 ships.

Another port which features in the exhibition is Y Felinheli, transformed by slate quarrying when the Assheton Smiths – the owners of Dinorwic quarry and the Vaynol Estate – built the harbour to export slate transported to the quay by the Dinorwic Railway, a narrow gauge railway (now the Llanberis Lake Railway).

They also decided to give Y Felinheli the alternative name of Port Dinorwic at that time!

Also featuring in the exhibition are four small ships made of slate – built of slate with sails made from copies of some of the archive photographs and OS maps of the area. They have been made by David Huntington of Anglesey.

The photographs can be seen until New Year’s Eve and admission is free.

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