Trefor quarry
The Wales Coast Path passes beneath the former railway incline which took stone from the quarry known locally as ‘Y Gwaith Mawr’, meaning ‘the large works’.
The local granite-like stone, comprising porphyrite and quartz, was removed commercially from the northern side of Yr Eifl from the 1840s. It was loaded into small ships at the nearby shore.
Quarrying expanded in the 1850s under new owners, who formed the Welsh Granite Company and developed the new village of Trefor – named after works manager Trefor Jones. The company opened a second quarry on the hillside and laid narrow-gauge railway tracks. Wagons descending on the new incline were attached to a cable, so that their weight hauled empty wagons up on the adjacent track.
From the foot of the incline, at the village’s edge, wagons were hauled by horse and later steam power through the fields to Trefor harbour. There were quarry workshops at the foot of the incline. A short track from there allowed delivery by rail of coal and other imports to the village and a limekiln.
Demand for granite boomed as new streets in industrial towns needed hard-wearing setts. After a change of owners in 1864, a third quarry was opened at Y Gwaith Mawr. The harbour was developed for bigger ships to load. The photos by John Thomas, courtesy of the National Library of Wales, show workers in the quarry c.1875 and a view of the quarry and incline c.1885.
In 1902 quarry manager Augustus Wheeler detonated a “gigantic blast” electrically. The explosives had been packed in tunnels. It was reported then that the quarrymen earned high wages, but demand for setts was falling. In the last four months of 1907, 300 men lost their jobs at Y Gwaith Mawr.
The Darbishire family, which owned quarries in Penmaenmawr and Nantlle, took over in 1911 and found new markets for the stone. A new building housed saws and polishing machines for making ornamental items. In 1913 grassland north of the quarry slid into the sea over several days, pushed by the “enormous weight” of quarry waste on the hillside.
Managing director Colonel Charles Darbishire, ex-Royal Welsh Fusiliers, hosted a First World War recruitment drive by the Welsh Army Corps in Nantlle and Trefor in January 1915. Seven months later he was informed that his quarry manager, Major Augustus Wheeler, had been killed in action at Gallipoli, Turkey, leaving a wife and four children.
The quarry closed in 1971 but was used on a small scale later, including for stones for the sport of curling.
With thanks to Gwynedd Archaeological Trust
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