Giants North Wales

National Slate Museum

They say that North Wales slate put a roof on the world. Which is a pretty big job by anyone’s standards. But it does underline the fact that our slate is the strongest and most durable known to man.

The National Slate Museum at Llanberis is a living celebration of this most Welsh of Welsh industries. You can still see blacksmiths at work and slate being split. You can watch the only working incline in the UK carry wagons up and down the quarry face.

And in the Victorian workshops that once serviced the huge Dinorwic slate quarry, you will believe that the workmen have only just downed their tools.

So the museum is like one big time machine. With a giant all of its own: the largest working water wheel in mainland Britain. More than 15 metres wide and still working perfectly almost a century and half after it was built in 1870.