Dinorwig Quarry, near Llanberis, Gwynedd

UNESCO World Heritage Site

Parent & Teacher Guidance
UNESCO World Heritage Site

What do the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal in India, Stonehenge in Wiltshire and the slate area of Gwynedd have in common? Well, they have all won UNESCO World Heritage site status. The slate landscape of Gwynedd is the latest site to be awarded this status.  This is the fourth World Heritage Site in Wales to be added to the UNESCO list. The other three are Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, Blaenavon Industrial Landscape and the Castle of Edward I. There are around 900 places around the world.  

Within the Slate landscape of Gwynedd the specific areas given this recognition are the Ogwen Valley, the Nantlle Valley, Dinorwig, Cwm Pennant, Ffestiniog and Abergynolwyn. These areas are renowned across the world for providing slate. First Minister Mark Drakeford said "UNESCO recognition will help preserve the legacy and history of slate area communities for generations to come". 

The application to gain this status has been going on for 12 years. The slate producing area of Gwynedd has magnificent  landscapes that mean something to the whole of humanity. At its peak over 3,000 people worked at Dinorwig Quarry on the slopes of Elidir Fawr in the Peris Valley which was once one of the largest slate quarries in the world.  

What better way to honour an area with key global value?  

Glossary
UNESCO
World heritage sites are locations in the world that have a key global value to humanity.
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct
This is Thomas Telford's famous aqueduct which was added to the UNESCO list in 2009.
Mark Drakeford
Mark Drakeford was born and brought up in Carmarthenshire. He became First Minister on 13th of December 2018.
Dinorwig Quarry
With the Penrhyn Quarry, Dinorwig Quarry was one of the two largest quarries in Wales. At one time these two were the largest quarries in the world.
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Welsh Flag

‘The Red Dragon Leads the way’ 

Do you know why the Welsh flag features the red dragon? The flag features the red dragon of Cadwaladr ap Caswallon, King of Gwynedd and the last of the Brythonic kings, which emerged when Henry Tudor became king of England. Henry Tudor's wish was to be a descendant of Cadwaladr so he decided to adopt the flag as his coat of arms. When the Tudor age ended the red dragon disappeared as a royal emblem. In 1807 the red dragon on a green and white background was adopted as the emblem of Wales. In 1953 a line of a poem by Deio Ab Ieuan Ddu was added as the motto, ‘Y ddraig Goch ddyry cychwyn’ (‘The Red Dragon Leads the way’). 

Several countries celebrate a 'flag day'. Siôn Jobbins in his book The Red Dragon, The Story of the Welsh Flag suggests that 28 May is the day we should celebrate since that is the earliest record of raising and waving the flag as the Mimosa sailed from Liverpool to the Welsh Colony in Patagonia. 

To this day the Red Dragon flag continues to fly with pride and honour. 

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Traditional Welsh fruit cake

Bara Brith

Bara Brith is a traditional tea bread flavoured with tea, dried fruit and spice. In English, the name Bara brith means ‘speckled bread’, as ‘bara’ means ‘bread’ and ‘brith’ means 'speckled'. It was reportedly a Welsh chef who created the original bara brith by adding dried fruit and spice to a bread dough. 

 

Bara Brith Recipe 

Ingredients 

  • 450 grams mixed dried fruits 
  • 300 millilitres cold tea 
  • 2 tablespoons marmalade  
  • 1 egg  
  • 2 tablespoons soft brown sugar  
  • 1 teaspoon mixed spice  
  • 450 grams self-raising flour 
  • Honey 

 

Method 

  1. Soak the fruit overnight in the tea.  
  2. Heat the oven to 325 F/170 C/Gas 3 and grease a 900 gram bread tin. 
  3. Add the marmalade, egg, brown sugar, spice and flour to the dried fruit and mix well.  
  4. Spoon the mixture into the bread tin and bake for 1 1/4 hours. Check from time to time that the top does not brown too much, or use foil if necessary. 
  5. Allow the Bara Brith to stand for 5 minutes then place on a tray to cool. Spread honey on top.
  6. Slice and enjoy. 
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Singer, songwriter and harpist, Georgia Ruth

Georgia Ruth

This is a special singer, composer and harpist who sings in Welsh and English. Georgia Ruth was born in Llantwit Major in south Wales on 5 January 1988. At the age of four she moved to live to Aberystwyth with her family. At the age of seven she began to learn to play the harp. She went on to study English Literature at Cambridge University. This was when she started composing her own music and in 2008 Georgia Ruth appeared at the Glastonbury Festival. 

Georgia Ruth combines folk influences in her music to create totally unique sounds. Her first album, 'Week of Pines', appeared in 2013, her second album 'Fossil Scale' in 2016, and her third album 'May' in 2017.

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
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The Welsh Dragon

Welsh Dragon v White Dragon 

The red dragon has been linked with Wales since the fourth century with the arrival of the Romans. It is also connected to the history of the Saxons trying to overcome the Island of Britain.  

Back in the fifth century when the Celtic King Gwrtheyrn chose Dinas Emrys near Beddgelert as a site for his castle in order to escape the Saxons, he set about building a fortress. Every night the stonemasons’ tools disappeared and the wall they had built collapsed.  Gwrtheyrn's solution to the problem was to scatter the blood of a human child from the 'other world' on the site. The child was found in Caer Myrddin, a boy called Myrddin Emrys. But he was not a natural child but a wizard who persuaded Gwrtheyrn that there were two dragons sleeping in a lake under the castle and breaking down the walls. Gwrtheyrn dug down in search of the lake and the dragons were found. As they woke they began to fight. Eventually the white dragon escaped, conceding defeat to the red dragon who could then rest quietly.  

And that’s how the red dragon came to be on the Welsh flag. 

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Thursday 20th October 1831

Diary of a Quarryman 

The ponc was wet today and the hobnail boots were slipping. The chisels and hammer worked as hard as ever. There were four of us on the gallery. Will and I were drilling the rock ready for blasting. The sirens echoed loudly while we stood 7 yards away before the blast. It was hard work loading the big slate onto the truck to be transported by rail down to the quarry. 

Lunchtime. It was nice to reach the warmth of the cabin and have a chat with the boys while our corduroy trousers dried out and I enjoyed a piece of bread. Another long day but the hymn singing was as good as ever to keep body and soul going 

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Dinorwig Quarry

The Dinorwig quarry located between the villages of Llanberis and Dinorwig in North Wales is a large former slate quarry which closed on 22nd of August 1969. At its peak it was the second largest slate quarry in the world with over 3000 employees. The largest was Penrhyn quarry near Bethesda.

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The chairing ceremony at the 1958 Ebbw Vale National Eisteddfod of Wales, won by T. Llew Jones, also featuring Erfyl Fychan, William Morris, Cynan, Crwys and Trefin.
One of the treasures of Wales
Name, DOB:
T Llew Jones, 11th October 1914
Native home:
Bwlch Melyn, Pentre-cwrt, Llandysul
Education:
Capel Mair Junio School, Llandysul Grammar School
Profession:
Teacher for 35 years at Ysgol Tregroes and headteacher at Ysgol Coedybryn
Achievements:
Winning the chair at the Ebbw Vale National Eisteddfod in 1958. Winning the chair at the Caernarfon National Eisteddfod in 1959.
Interests:
He was an author for over half a century and was one of Wales's most popular children's authors. He published over 50 books of stories, novels and poems.
First publication:
Trysor Plasywernen.
Last Publication:
Trysorfa T. Llew Jones
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The Quarryman 

Excerpt from the film ‘Y Chwarelwr’, made in 1935. Copyright © Urdd Gobaidd Cymru 

 

Video subtitles:

Wales, where the rocks are rugged, and the quarrymen carve a terraced beauty out of that strange stone called slate. They know their drill these northern Welshmen at Penrhyn where they have been digging great holes and winning the nation’s most durable roof materials for over 300 years without much altering their basic techniques. You’d hardly believe it, but they use almost 100 tons of gunpowder every year to blast out the slate. Simple isn’t it and generations of experience tells you how much ballast you must pack in behind your measured charge before you set up enough inches of fuse smouldering to give you time to get well away. It won’t be a big bang or it will blow the precious slate to smithereens. They’ve learned to do it just so. This is the only stone in the world sliced fine that will resist a hundred years of rain. It was formed by great prehistoric pressures when the world was a few million years younger and flexing its mountainous muscles for the first time. There was a railway here a hundred years ago and there’ll certainly be one here in a hundred years’ time. You don’t notice it but we have come down in the world so much slate have we gouged out of the countryside. Now we go up on a hydraulic hoist famous for its age alone because it too was here a hundred years ago. Unlike any other stone, slate – tough though it is – can be split into longways layers if you wish as thin as cardboard that gives it its special value and that too calls for skilled craftsmanship. You can take a slab of slate an inch thick and divide it nine times when you’ve acquired the knack but slate is so brittle that almost 4/5ths of it goes to waste. An industrial archaeologist from the Ministry of Works was sent to survey the Penrhyn quarry and parts of the installations are being officially preserved as ancient industrial monuments because, efficient though it is, it hardly seems to belong to this modern day and age. British Pathe Archive – All rights reserved.