National Slate Museum facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
National Slate Museum

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Established	1972 (1972)
Location	Llanberis, Gwynedd, Wales
Type	Mining museum

The National Slate Museum is a super cool place in Llanberis, Gwynedd, Wales. It's built right inside the old workshops of the huge Dinorwic quarry, which used to be a very busy slate quarry. This museum helps us learn all about the amazing history of the slate industry in Wales. It shows how people worked with slate and how important it was for building things.

The museum is also a special part of the European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH). It's managed by Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, which looks after many museums in Wales.

A Look Back: The Museum's Story

From Quarry Workshops to Museum

The workshops where the museum is now were built way back in 1870. They were made on land created from piles of waste rock from the nearby Vivian Quarry. These workshops replaced older sheds and were used to fix and maintain the quarry's equipment and its trains.

• Trains with a narrow track (23.5 inches wide) used to bring slate from the quarry.
• Other trains with a wider track (4 feet wide) carried the slate from the quarry to Port Dinorwic.

The quarry stopped working in 1969. A few years later, on May 25, 1972, the site opened as the North Wales Quarrying Museum.

Connecting the Past and Present

Today, the museum is connected to the village of Llanberis by the Llanberis Lake Railway. This railway even uses part of the museum building as its own workshops!

The museum got a big grant of £1.6 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This money helped them make the museum even better. Now, you can see special displays, including real slateworkers' cottages from the Victorian era. These cottages used to be in a place called Tanygrisiau, near Blaenau Ffestiniog. They were carefully taken apart, stone by stone, and rebuilt exactly as they were at the museum site.

There's also a cool multi-media show called To Steal a Mountain. It tells the story of the men who worked hard to quarry slate here. You can learn about their lives and what their jobs were like.

The Giant Waterwheel and Incline

The museum is home to the largest working waterwheel in mainland Britain! You can walk around and see it up close. This huge waterwheel was built in 1870. It's about 50 feet (15 meters) tall and 5 feet (1.6 meters) wide. It helped power the quarry's machinery.

Near the museum, you can also see the Vivian incline. This was a special kind of railway where loaded slate wagons going down would pull empty wagons back up. It was a clever way to move things using gravity!

Locomotives at the Museum

The museum has several old trains, called locomotives, that used to work in Welsh slate quarries. These engines are an important part of the history of the slate industry.

Name	Builder	Type	Works number	Date	Notes	Image
Una	Hunslet	0-4-0ST	873	1905	This locomotive was built for the Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry.
	Brush	4wBE		1917	This engine was first used for making supplies during the First World War. Later, it worked at Aberllefenni Slate Quarry. It has now been fixed and can run again.
	W. J. Williams	4wPM			This was a converted motorcycle! It was built at the Oakeley Slate Quarry to ride on the quarry's small train tracks.
Cilgwyn	Ruston and Hornsby	4wDM			This locomotive used to work at the Cilgwyn quarry.