24 C O N T E X T 1 2 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 Annual School ual School 2011 ool 2011 IHBC An 11 IHBC Annual S HBC Annual School School 2011 IHBC IHBC Annual Scho led to three well-worn Land Rovers in which we were taken up into a dark and disorienting lunar landscape of ‘tips’ and ‘galleries’. We discovered how slate is extracted, and watched something resembling a giant cheese-wire slicing through the face of the rock. This is done for 24 hours horizontally and 24 hours vertically. The material is then sent down to the sheds for handling. The large mounds of waste material are the ‘tips’ which, at the height of production in the 19th century, represented up to 90 per cent of the material excavated. At Penrhyn the slate is Cambrian, the oldest type available inWales. It comes in a variety of colours: grey, purple, and even red or green in places. The quarry workers know where each colour can be found. Back at the factory we were shown the three stages of manufacture: sawing, splitting and dressing. The tour included a special treat: the opportunity to split a slate ourselves. Bold and shy alike gave this a try, handling the material at the very moment it turns into a crafted object. To this day splitting remains a manual activity, while the sawing and dressing are mechanised. Today Penrhyn fulfils 10 per cent of the demand for slate in the UK. Between 35 and 45 per cent of its production is exported. With the rise of the conservation movement natural slate is back in demand, and Welsh slate is often now specified for repairs and replacements.We were told how and why poor-quality slate failed, and why investing in Welsh slate made long-term sense. At Penrhyn the waste is not wasted, but sold to garden centres as a decorative aggregate or ground down for use in cosmetics. We concluded the visit with a talk from John Donne. He described the development and properties of slate as a roofing material, and gave us advice on its maintenance and conservation. In the words of the chemist and physicist Michael Faraday, who visited Penrhyn Quarry as part of a tour of Wales in 1819: ‘The splintering character of all about us, the sharp rocky projection above us, the peculiar, but here general, colour of the rock together made up an appearance unlike anything we had seen before.’ Lucie Carayon Visits to Conwy Castle, town walls, planned town and Plas Mawr There were two visits to Conwy during this year’s School. The first was to see Conwy Castle and its medieval town walls, and the second to see more of the planned town and the Elizabethan townhouse, Plas Mawr. To visit Conwy and to experience its extraordinary townscape is to see unusually clearly how the events of history have created our urban landscapes. Conwy was very much the creation of Edward I following his second campaign inWales.The timetable for construction was extraordinary.The castle and town walls were built by the King’s Works between 1283 and 1287, with a Cistercian monastery being re-sited to provide land for the planned town. It is a striking and characterful town with its medieval and later buildings. These include the National A delegate being shown how slates are split at the Penrhyn Quarry (Photo: RobertWalker)
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