Nantlle Valley slate quarry

[Patrisia]

Does anyone have any information when this slate quarry may have closed please?

I am trying to help a contact with a brick wall and it would help to establish a time line.

The only information is sketchy, to say the least ;)

We have Harry or Henry Jones born circa 1880, possibly around Penygroes;
he died sometime during the 1914-1918 war, while in the South Wales Borderers;he married Jean Nitte?, probably in Pontypridd, and their daughter was born in 1907 in Llanwonna, Pontypridd.
There are some details on the back of a Christmas card - what else? ;)

"......he was married in Pontypridd whilst working there.He came down from Nantlle Valley in North Wales looking for work after the Slate Quarry had closed.
I presume therefore that my Grandfather was born either in Penygroes,Bryncir,or Garndolbenmaen"

Any help would be very gratefully received!

I am posting this on the Brick wall as well.

[hughar]

Have you tried the Nantlle Valley website at http://www.nantlle.com/index.htm

Also lots of information and pictures at http://www.penmorfa.com/Slate/dorothea%20history.html

Seems there was more than one quarry in the valley.

[Patrisia]

Thanks for the links.
I had Googled for the Nantlle Valley quarries but didn't find any specific mention of a closure around 1900.

It does seem, from the Dorothea link, that they were declining from the 1890s on. So perhaps he was at one of those that closed fairly early on, and with the decline in the others, he had little chance of being taken on elsewhere.
Hence the move, to the Glamorgan coal mines.

Thanks for trying to help