Foundries amidst the Slate Industry of NW Wales
Author - John Peredur (Pred) Hughes, SB, A4

£25 + P&P available from usual outlets or myself

http://www.moorebooks.co.uk/ 

Publishers review
Sara Eade’s small publishing house has gained a deserved reputation for high-quality illustrated books about local and industrial history. Her latest offering, penned by Pred Hughes, is of the customary standard that we have now come to expect from this imprint. Pred will be familiar to many who have attended the industrial archaeology courses at Plas Tanybwlch over the years, and this book is a real treat, drawing on Pred’s own experiences within the Slate Industry. After a varied working life, where Pred was the Manager of Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry as well as working with his uncle in Oakeley Quarry; Pred now works at the National Slate Museum in Llanberis as a Craftsman/Carpenter. Pred’s familiarity with the industry lends this excellent book a warm style of writing and coupled with his own experiences of casting at Gilfach Ddu, the book is very readable even though it is about a niche area of a niche archaeological interest!
The book is arranged on broadly chronological grounds, the opening chapter is about Bethesda and Bangor. The foundry at Bethesda served the great Penrhyn Quarry, and the Hirael Foundry in Bangor made slate saws. Slate saws and Dressing Machines are a common theme in this book, as nearly every foundry examined made them as consumables for the roofing slate industry. Where there are surviving examples Pred uses several pictures to illustrate the output from each foundry, especially the machines that served the slate quarries. After Bangor, Pred looks at Llanberis and the still-surviving foundry at Gilfach Ddu. He then provides an excellent overview of the complex story behind the famous DeWinton foundry in Caernarfon: known to many for the steam engines they produced, but also responsible for casting bridges, lampposts and yet more varieties of slate working machines. Pred also examines the other foundry in Caernarfon: the Union Foundry: this produced weighbridges and saw sharpening machines.

After the bright lights of Caernarfon, Pred looks at the small local foundry in Nantlle that served the quarries in that valley. He covers the very unusual slate saw at Glynllifion which has a cast bed but the supports are made from slate slabs: this may well have been made in Dyffryn Nantlle. Pred then shines his torch on the Union, Glaslyn and Britannia Foundries in Portmadoc as well as looking at the ephemeral R Jones and Sons Foundry. Naturally, the Boston Lodge foundry of the Festiniog features, together with some archival material that really puts the output of the Portmadoc foundries into the context of supplying the Festiniog Railway. Pred also mentions the Aberia Foundry at Portmeirion, just round the headland from Boston Lodge. Further up the Festiniog, he also looks at the Tanygrisiau Foundry – served by a siding off the FR. This foundry also made slate dressers. Pred closes his examination of the individual foundries by looking at the Turner Bros. foundry in Newtown: although out of the main geographical area of the book, Turners supplied dressing machines and saws to the quarries.
Pred then examines the products, makers, patents and patentees of the foundries; looking at waterwheels, incline drum castings and different types of dressers: not to mention the many varied forms of turntables and winches. There is a drawing of a very early slate wagon from 1856 as well as a survey of saw tables and a patent drawing of a saw table: I congratulate Pred on his diligence in research. He has found a wealth of illustrations from contemporary engravings to headed orders and invoices to modern-day photographs of the foundry buildings. He has uncovered much that was previously unknown and there is a lot of original research in the 90-odd pages of the book. This book is a ‘must’ for anyone interested in the slate industry and will also be of great interest to Industrial Archaeologists of whatever persuasion.