Latest news with #slatequarry
BBC News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
House of the Dragon quarry location collapses in rockslide
Part of a hillside has collapsed in a disused slate quarry in north Wales where battle scenes from the hit fantasy series House of the Dragon were filmed.A huge rockslide and a thick grey cloud of dust can be seen in video footage from a trail at Dinorwig Quarry in Jones, 21, from Sling, Anglesey, was returning from a hike up Yr Wyddfa, also known as Snowdon, and trying to film goats when he heard "cracking" sounds and saw falling slate."Next thing as I'm filming the whole wall just collapses... I was mind blown... the last thing I expected to see," he said. "I kind of thought it might be a controlled demolition, but then I remembered the quarry's been inactive since I think 1969."Opened in 1787 above Llyn Padarn, the quarry was at one point the second largest in the is part of the slate landscape of north west Wales, which is being developed as a tourism destination since becoming a Unesco World Heritage site in quarry was also a key filming location for House of the Dragon. Gwenydd council said the site was privately Jones was back in north Wales from his studies at Cardiff University. "Luckily for me there's a massive pit under the ridge [between Aran and the slide]," he said. "I thought it was alright, but the minute I started to feel worried was when the couple I saw came sprinting down from the hill. "Seeing the fear on their faces that like kicked in my flight or fright." Like the couple, he said he started to run as well."I was like, 'God!, what if this is like a chain reaction? What if there's more collapses all the way down the quarry?'"So I just started running with them out of like sheer instinct."Mr Jones said there a number of off limits areas in the quarry, but he came across climbers who were heading to climb in the quarry that said he showed them the video and some said they were "looking forward to climbing the new routes that had been made from the collapse". It has had the opposite effect on Mr Jones. "The main takeaway is just be careful. "When I was there you could hear the slate dropping... cracking... the advice I would give is if you can hear any of that, just get as far away as possible."
BBC News
21-06-2025
- BBC News
Y Felinheli pub landlord finds hidden tunnel in basement
A landlord who found a secret tunnel under his pub hopes it can be used to create a space celebrating the area's cultural Bennett made the discovery beneath Yr Heulyn pub, part of Port Dinorwic Marina in Y Felinheli, Gwynedd, which he bought as part of a consortium last tunnel formed part of a railway that transported slate from the nearby Dinorwic Quarry, once one of the biggest in the world, to the harbour."We want to bring back that cultural heritage to the area – make it a working museum in effect," he said. Mr Bennett, who lives locally and has kept a boat at the harbour for the last eight years, said he had seen the area "declining". When the previous owners of the marina went into administration, he and a group of investors bought it as part of plans to rejuvenate it. This has included infrastructure upgrades as well as the opening of Yr Heulyn, a pub which was previously a tapas restaurant on the at old photographs of the area, Mr Bennett said he suspected the old railway ran close to the venue and one afternoon decided to look closer in the venue's basement to "see what we could find".The group broke through a thick plaster wall, behind which they found the tunnel with "thousands" of discarded bottles in it. The most recent bottle dated back to 2003, which is when Mr Bennett believes the wall was put up. Slate has been quarried in north Wales for thousands of years but demand rapidly increased during the Industrial Revolution when it was used for the roofs of factories and workers' Wales slate was said to have "roofed the 19th Century world", including prominent buildings such as Westminster Hall and the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, Australia. Dinorwic Quarry – located on the edge of Eryri National Park, also known as Snowdonia – was once the second largest quarry in the world before it closed in 1969. Although the tracks were removed, the tunnel had been part of a railway used to transport slate from the quarry to the harbour, where it was either exported or sent around the UK. Mr Bennett said the investors were still deciding what to do with the space, but that they wanted to use it to "celebrate the cultural heritage of the area"."It has potential as a museum, or maybe an extension of the pub – it would be a fantastic spot as a speakeasy pub hidden away, but we haven't got that far yet," he said.
