Monday July 12th 1819
Monday July 12th …. This morning my brothers rode on horseback to the slate quarries near Festiniogg during the time they were
absent Mama and I walked over the grounds of Mr Oakley which are close to the Inn they are very pretty, at eleven o’Clock we all proceeded to Bethgelert but prolonged our ride by visiting the beautiful village of Tremadoc built entirely by Mr Madocks the situation is the most perfect that can be imagined, about 15 years ago he embanked an area of the sea which is now in some parts become fertile but owing to some mismanagement he failed and the sea has made its way through; the village farm remains unfinished; leaving
Tremadoc we passed by Pont aber Glaslynn a cataract considered one of the finest in Wales where it has a large quantity of water but without it I do not think much of it the situation is very grand. Bethgelert does not boast of much more than the well known interesting and affecting tale of Bed gelert. his grave is in the adjoining fields a Welsh harper for the first time welcomed us on our arrival he played some beautiful Welsh airs with much spirit.
OBSERVATIONS & COMMENTS:
Slate industry in Wales has continued since the Roman period. The quarry that Alex, William and Frank would have visited was the Oakeley Quarry in Blaenau Ffestiniog, begun in the previous year, 1818, when Samuel Holland, a Liverpool merchant, leased land near Rhiwbryfdir farm. As landlords, the Oakeley family of Tan y Bwlch took a 10% royalty for the three-year lease. In 1821, at the end of the initial three years, Holland took a further 21-year lease on the site, but he sold this in 1825 to the Welsh Slate Company which considerably extended the quarry. Oakeley continued to produce significant tonnages of slate through World War II, but experienced a rapid decline in the 1960s, along with the remainder of the British slate industry. The quarry closed in 1969, and the company was liquidated and wound down in 1972. The quarry re-opened as a working quarry and tourist attraction in 1978 under the name Gloddfa Ganol. The tourist operation included an extensive collection of narrow gauge locomotives, many connected to the Welsh slate industry. Two parts of the Oakeley underground workings were opened to visitors and the working mill could also be viewed. The commercial operation, under the name Ffestiniog Slate Co. reworked parts of the previously underground mine as an opencast quarry. The Ffestiniog Slate Co. was sold to McAlpine in 1998 and the tourist side of the business was closed. The quarry continued to operate using heavy earth moving equipment to continue and expand the previous open-cast operation. In March 2010 Welsh Slate announced the quarry's closure, due to the discovery of subsidence and the remaining workers were transferred to another of the company's quarries.
Victorian slate extraction techniques generated vast amounts of slate waste - for every ton of finished slate produced, approximately nine tons of waste rock are extracted. It is estimated that the lifetime of the Oakeley concerns, more than 100 million tons of waste was generated. The restricted location of Oakeley on the slopes of Allt-fawr made disposing of this waste a significant problem. The original village of Rhiwbryfdir and the nearby monastery of Mynachlog were purchased by Oakeley (see note below) and then buried under a massive waste tip. Space was also sought on the south bank of the Afon Barlwydd (see note) and in 1854 the Glan y Don (also known as the Pen y Bont) tip was established. This tip was accessed by a high viaduct that crossed the Ffestiniog Railway's Dinas branch, the London and North Western Railway's Conway valley line and the river. This tip became so large that a mill was built on top of it for further slate processing capacity in 1875. The picture below shows the extent of the tips overshadowing the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog
2005: Blaenau Ffestiniog, taken from Moelwyn Bach showing the large waste heaps that dominate the town by Stemonitis. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blaenau_Ffestiniog.jpg
The Festiniog Railway provided a cheap and efficient connection with the wharves at Porthmadog and therefore with the wider British and world markets. The quarries which made use of the railway were able to substantially reduce their overall costs and therefore increase their profits. The first quarry to use the railway was Holland's Lower Quarry. Initially Holland's slates had to be carted to the railway's terminus at Rhiwbryfdir as the Welsh Slate Company had successfully blocked his attempt to complete a direct connection via an incline. By 1839 agreement had been reached over the route of an incline to the Festiniog Railway, and slates from Holland's quarry were now sent directly onto the railway.
The 1839 incline connecting Holland's Quarry with the Festiniog Railway at Dinas http://www.oldukphotos.com/graphics/Wales%20Photos/Merionethshire,%20Blaenau%20Ffestiniog,%20an%20old%20incline%20near%20the%20Station%20-%201280pix.jpg
The disused main incline from Oakeley quarry to the Ffestiniog Railway in 1977 https://www.flickr.com/photos/45873442@N04/8439546181
In 1899 the Ffestiniog Railway's Dinas branch was diverted to allow the Doman Fawr tip on the eastern slope of Allt-fawr to be extended further south of the quarry to create further tipping space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakeley_Quarry See also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_industry_in_Wales and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llechwedd_Slate_Caverns
Note : Since publication I am grateful to have received the following corrections (originally sourced via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakeley_quarry ) from Steffan ab Owain: “Two things -The Oakeley family did not purchase the lands at Rhiwbryfdir, it was already part of the Tan-y-Bwlch estate. The river is Afon Barlwyd not Barlwydd.”
Oakley Estate: William Griffith Oakeley took over the estate in 1811 and rented his land to Samuel Holland, a Liverpool Slate Dealer. The hungry demand for the best slate in the world was growing quickly as the industrial revolution gathered speed and vast quantities of building materials were required across the world. By the end of the 19th century the Oakeley quarries were producing 60,000 tonnes of slate a year; each tonne transported from the hills down to Porthmadog by the Ffestiniog Railway and shipped across the globe. http://oakeleyarms.co.uk/oakeley-arms-history/
Tremadoc: a good example of a planned town, with an array of Georgian architecture built in the classical tradition of the 18th century by William Madocks, who bought the land in 1798. The centre of Tremadog was complete by 1811 and remains substantially unaltered.
William Alexander Madocks, MP for Boston in Lincolnshire (1773-1828) - mezzotint by Charles Turner, after a 1812 painting after James Ramsay from the Ffestiniog Railway Traveller's Guide. The work of art is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or less. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WA_Madocks.jpg
Tremadog is located immediately below the high ground of Snowdonia and on the edge of the modern Snowdonia National Park. It was built on flat land reclaimed from Traeth Mawr, the estuary of the Afon Glaslyn, and to enhance its appearance Madocks placed the Market Square, the centre of his project, just in front of a great crag of rock, the former edge of the estuary. It towers some 100 feet (30 m) over the Town Hall, and the coaching inn, giving a theatrical effect to the area. He hoped to attract more buildings that fitted his overall plan, but this plan failed and he eventually funded most of them himself. The main streets were named Dublin Street and London Street, as Madocks wanted Tremadog to be a stopping off point on the main route from London to Porth Dinllaen on the Llŷn Peninsula, which was intended to be the chief port for ferries to Dublin. However, this plan failed when Holyhead supplanted Porth Dinllaen as the main ferry port. He was keen that everything should enhance the village's appearance — his main interest. Unlike some contemporary town planners, he was less interested in the moral reform of the inhabitants: he felt that people had the right to work, educate their children, pray, drink, gamble, save or waste money as they saw fit; and that the town should give its residents opportunities to get on with their own lives, providing that they were congenial neighbours.
circa 1865: A view of the square in Tremadog, showing people walking along the road, and St Mary's Church in the collection of the National Library of Wales Accession number 1132630 . This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tremadoc,_Carnarvonshire.jpeg
2005: “Tremadog village… Viewed from the summit of Moel y Gest, looking north. The two shapely summits are Cnicht on the right, and Moel Siabod in distance” by Davis Medcalf. This image was taken from the Geograph project collection. The copyright on this image is owned by David Medcalf and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tremadog-panorama.jpg
Madocks believed that "in education and religion all ought to have fair play", and this was reflected in the provision of a Gothic revival style church for the Anglicans and a classical chapel for the Methodists. His approach did not find favour with the Bishop of Bangor, but he defended his decision by telling the Bishop that the church would be built on rock, while the chapel would be built on sand. This was true geologically, but was also a reference to the Biblical parable of the wise and foolish builders.
The entrance to the churchyard is spanned by a decorative arch of Coade stone in Gothic horror style, with representations of boars, dragons, frogs, grimacing cherubs, owls, shrouded figures and squirrels, while the tops of the towers are surrounded by elephants' heads. Madocks wanted it to become a parish church, but it was only ever a chapel of ease, as Tremadog was part of the parish of Ynyscynhaearn. Although he provided a churchyard, no burials took place, but it was one of the few buildings in the region where services were regularly conducted in the English language. The church was fitted with box pews, cast iron windows with coloured glass, and a blue ceiling with stars painted on it. There was a crypt, the precise location of which is unknown, in which Madocks hoped to be buried, but he died in Paris and was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery. He is commemorated by a brass plaque, which also commemorates the wedding of Mary Madocks to Martin Williams there in 1811. John Williams, originally a gardener from Anglesey, who worked tirelessly to complete Madocks' plans when he was so often away, was buried in the vault when he died in 1850, as were his wife and their only son, W T Massey Williams. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tremadog
Pont Aberglaslyn was perhaps built in the 17th century, then extensively rebuilt and widened in 1795-6. Folklore claims that it was constructed by the Devil or by the Romans; a stone with the marking "W M 1656" scratched on it was found during reconstruction . Another possibly medieval bridge spans a small stream that is a tributary of the Glasyn nearby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_Aberglaslyn
circa 1810: Pont Aberglasslyn print in the collection of the National Library of Wales Accession number 1131288 and made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pont_Aberglasslyn_(1131288).jpg
Whilst Lucy thought that the situation was “very grand”, as the print with anglers, the bridge beyond and the mountains towering above attests, she was not impressed by the falls themselves. The print below, showing the Salmon Leap falls, reinforces the magnificence of the mountainous background but the falls in the foreground did not meet her expectations.
Bethgelert: The village is probably named after an early Christian missionary and leader called Celert (or Cilert) who settled here early in the 8th century.
The Church of St. Mary stands at the end of Stryd yr Eglwys (Church Street). This was originally a part of an Augustinian Monastery (the chapel), but is all that remains since the rest of the monastery was burnt down during Edward I's war of conquest. Rebuilding was probably not completed at the time of the suppression of the monastery in about 1536. Parts of the building date from the 12th century and is still in active use today.
A raised mound in the village is called "Gelert's Grave" and is a significant tourist attraction, but the grave was built by the late 18th-century landlord of the Goat Hotel, David Pritchard, who created it in order to encourage tourism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beddgelert
Harpers were a part of the tourist experience in Georgian and Regency times. On reverse of a print entitled ‘Blind Harpist’ of eight people by a cottage, one of whom is playing a harp by J.W. Harding is the following record of Harpers in Wales, dated 1810:
“The harp is the favourite instrument of the Welch: every town in the Principality has its professor, who, generally, in fine weather, is the tenant of a seat at the door of an inn; and in bad weather, an inmate of the kitchen. Here, at his post, he waits the arrival of strangers, to whom he soon introduces himself with an offer of his services. The Welsh music is varied, expressive, and pathetic. It carries with it an air of originality and great antiquity, and with its congenial instrument, the harp, skilfully touched, is well calculated to warm the imagination and interest the heart.
In no place, perhaps, can happiness be so extremely diffused, as so small an expense, as in Wales. A small present to the harper, for the public use, will assemble the whole population of the village: and in this rustic group, no mode, by which joy can be indicated, will be omitted. Not even the unrivalled scenery of their country will leave so permanent, and so pleasing an impression on a benevolent mind, as this scene of innocent mirth. It is true, they neither dance with the gracefulness of a Frenchman, nor sing with the science of an Italian; but the most fastidious would not wish to exchange this honest, though awkward exhibition, for the purchased exertions of either.
All the families of the great in Wales are still furnished with this feudal appendage of rank and wealth. In their hospitable mansions many an aged harper finds a comfortable asylum …”
Published in a volume with other prints by the same artist ‘Book of views, no 14, N Wales, 1810’, by John Harding, 36 St James Street - Extracted from: https://sublimewales.wordpress.com/material-culture/harpers/harpers-wales-general/
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Can you help us?
Old Regency Prints, Pictures an Coaching maps: Do you have access to any prints or pictures showing what town and country would have looked like when Lucy travelled through? Any illustrations of what she would have seen in 1819 will enliven our research.
New Pictures: Do you have any modern pictures of the streets, buildings, gardens and views that would enable us to see the changes that two centuries have wrought?