This book has just been released

*Foundries amidst the Slate Industry of NW Wales *

Author - John Peredur (Pred) Hughes, SB, A4

£25 + P&P available from usual outlets or myself
http://www.moorebooks.co.uk/

Publishers review
Sara Eade’s small publishing house has gained a deserved reputation for
high-quality illustrated books about local and industrial history. Her
latest offering, penned by Pred Hughes, is of the customary standard that
we have now come to expect from this imprint. Pred will be familiar to many
who have attended the industrial archaeology courses at Plas Tanybwlch over
the years, and this book is a real treat, drawing on Pred’s own experiences
within the Slate Industry. After a varied working life, where Pred was the
Manager of Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry as well as working with his uncle in
Oakeley Quarry; Pred now works at the National Slate Museum in Llanberis as
a Craftsman/Carpenter. Pred’s familiarity with the industry lends this
excellent book a warm style of writing and coupled with his own experiences
of casting at Gilfach Ddu, the book is very readable even though it is
about a niche area of a niche archaeological interest!
The book is arranged on broadly chronological grounds, the opening chapter
is about Bethesda and Bangor. The foundry at Bethesda served the great
Penrhyn Quarry, and the Hirael Foundry in Bangor made slate saws. Slate
saws and Dressing Machines are a common theme in this book, as nearly every
foundry examined made them as consumables for the roofing slate industry.
Where there are surviving examples Pred uses several pictures to illustrate
the output from each foundry, especially the machines that served the slate
quarries. After Bangor, Pred looks at Llanberis and the still-surviving
foundry at Gilfach Ddu. He then provides an excellent overview of the
complex story behind the famous DeWinton foundry in Caernarfon: known to
many for the steam engines they produced, but also responsible for casting
bridges, lampposts and yet more varieties of slate working machines. Pred
also examines the other foundry in Caernarfon: the Union Foundry: this
produced weighbridges and saw sharpening machines.

After the bright lights of Caernarfon, Pred looks at the small local
foundry in Nantlle that served the quarries in that valley. He covers the
very unusual slate saw at Glynllifion which has a cast bed but the supports
are made from slate slabs: this may well have been made in Dyffryn Nantlle.
Pred then shines his torch on the Union, Glaslyn and Britannia Foundries in
Portmadoc as well as looking at the ephemeral R Jones and Sons Foundry.
Naturally, the Boston Lodge foundry of the Festiniog features, together
with some archival material that really puts the output of the Portmadoc
foundries into the context of supplying the Festiniog Railway. Pred also
mentions the Aberia Foundry at Portmeirion, just round the headland from
Boston Lodge. Further up the Festiniog, he also looks at the Tanygrisiau
Foundry – served by a siding off the FR. This foundry also made slate
dressers. Pred closes his examination of the individual foundries by
looking at the Turner Bros. foundry in Newtown: although out of the main
geographical area of the book, Turners supplied dressing machines and saws
to the quarries.
Pred then examines the products, makers, patents and patentees of the
foundries; looking at waterwheels, incline drum castings and different
types of dressers: not to mention the many varied forms of turntables and
winches. There is a drawing of a very early slate wagon from 1856 as well
as a survey of saw tables and a patent drawing of a saw table: I
congratulate Pred on his diligence in research. He has found a wealth of
illustrations from contemporary engravings to headed orders and invoices to
modern-day photographs of the foundry buildings. He has uncovered much that
was previously unknown and there is a lot of original research in the
90-odd pages of the book. This book is a ‘must’ for anyone interested in
the slate industry and will also be of great interest to Industrial
Archaeologists of whatever persuasion.

Marquis de Carabas (MRFS).

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