
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.

7,583 Listeners

1,057 Listeners

5,463 Listeners

1,801 Listeners

1,747 Listeners

1,042 Listeners

2,085 Listeners

1,976 Listeners

477 Listeners

38 Listeners

66 Listeners

282 Listeners

266 Listeners

253 Listeners

157 Listeners

106 Listeners

253 Listeners

102 Listeners

4,166 Listeners

3,187 Listeners

719 Listeners

235 Listeners

101 Listeners

26 Listeners

486 Listeners