
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Snowdonia's slate once roofed the world, employing thousands of workers across scores of mines in North Wales. But that was in its heyday, in Victorian times. Today, whilst the industry still exists, it employs just 350 people.
Helen Mark finds out what's become of the abandoned slate quarries and caverns today. Some are now places of leisure, with zip wires above ground, trampolines in underground slate caverns, and with scuba diving opportunities in flooded quarries, but others, as Helen discovers at Dorothea mine, are rapidly being reclaimed by nature.
Producer: Mark Smalley.
By BBC Radio 44.8
8383 ratings
Snowdonia's slate once roofed the world, employing thousands of workers across scores of mines in North Wales. But that was in its heyday, in Victorian times. Today, whilst the industry still exists, it employs just 350 people.
Helen Mark finds out what's become of the abandoned slate quarries and caverns today. Some are now places of leisure, with zip wires above ground, trampolines in underground slate caverns, and with scuba diving opportunities in flooded quarries, but others, as Helen discovers at Dorothea mine, are rapidly being reclaimed by nature.
Producer: Mark Smalley.

7,913 Listeners

1,067 Listeners

5,576 Listeners

1,808 Listeners

1,729 Listeners

1,018 Listeners

1,952 Listeners

1,996 Listeners

488 Listeners

36 Listeners

64 Listeners

284 Listeners

259 Listeners

255 Listeners

154 Listeners

110 Listeners

274 Listeners

101 Listeners

4,186 Listeners

3,245 Listeners

779 Listeners

242 Listeners

68 Listeners

24 Listeners

529 Listeners