Cornish Engines in Wales - Dorothea Quarry, Carnavonshire

Nature has now reclaimed this slate quarry

At the Lanlivery Show last year, I bought a book entitled Steam Engines and Waterwheels and this mentioned reports in the Model Engineer during the fifties of a surviving Cornish beam engine in the Dorothea Quarry near Nantlle, in Carnavonshire. From further research on the net, I learned that the old engine was still there and had been restored in the seventies but had fallen on hard times since then, as its location was away from the traditional tourist routes and access was poor.

Red rag to a bull this was - charge!

Dorothea Quarry is these days a well known diving attraction - although not for me as I'm far from being amphibious . In fact it was when the electric pumping engines were turned off in 1970 that the quarry became flooded. Since 1951, electric pumps unwatered the workings, which went down over a 100 metres, but the old steam engine was kept as a back up and last worked in 1956.

At one stage the area was contained within the Snowdonia National Park but I understand that the boundaries were changed and that it now exists in a no-man's land outside. Also, those who had restored the old engine and got it to run on compressed air had grown up and settled down, often living many miles away. The old engine had since then gone back into mothballs and remained in its engine house, which had been substantially fortified against thieves and vandals.

Compared to pictures from only a few years ago the Dorothea Quarry engine is getting rapidly overgrown.

It's fairly well marked on Ordnance Survey maps being on the southern side of the quarry but I deliberately went around the long way to see the other spectacular ruins on this site. It's raidly overgrown now but in 1976 looked like this.

Any day now this little's going to come crashing down - one corner's disintegrated already - so skip up to that doorway on those sticky-out stones and pray your weight on them is negligible (and don't think about why there are gaps in the flights of vertical stepping stones)

 The quarrymen built great pyramids of slate and used overhead cableways to cross the great voids of the quarry. Some of them don't look like they'll stay up much longer and have massive cracks running down their sides. I was also intrigued by the stepping stones poking out of their sides giving access to doorways and levels far above.  

Some people ask me if poking about ruins like this on my own ever freaks me out. My answer is not usually. Talysarn Hall is a very odd place, though, and I was happy to leave it.

On the north side are extensive ruins of a very large house, Talysarn Hall. This house originally predated the quarrying operations but was extensively rebuilt as a large but plain Victorian mansion. It's now difficult to see where the private house began and the industrial buildings ended. The site is very overgrown and the buildings are rapidly crumbling. If it wasn't for the graffiti and obvious attentions of bored kids it could almost be a described as picturesque but I felt a deep sense of unhappiness about the place. I can't say why but I was happy to get on in my search for the engine house.

Talysarn Hall was built to impress and still does but for different reasons. I believe this was the entrance to the stable block

There used to be an extensive railway system in the quarry and the 3' 6" Nantlle Railway carried the slates all the way into Caernavon to the north, until it was absorbed by the LNWR and converted to standard gauge. The quarry also had an internal railway system of 2' gauge and in another curious Cornish connection one of the quarry Hunslet steam locomotives has been given a new lease of life on the Launceston Steam Railway having not worked since 1942.

Dorothea in the workshop at Launcseton in 2009.

For many years Dorothea languished in its shed at Dorothea, being robbed of parts and fittings to keep other, healthier Hunslets going. It was eventually reduced to a pile of components that came down west to be restored and reassembled into a working locomotive by Kay Bowman and entered into service on the LSR earlier this year.

The engine itself is the last but two made by Harveys of Hayle in Cornwall and dates from 1906 so is  the newest surviving engine made by the firm. It has a cylinder diameter of 68 inches and is far better protected than the ones at Glyn Pits (although that isn't saying much).

I've never seen a clock on an engine house before. Was it steam driven?

The engine house is superb and is built out of slate waste. I would love to go inside whenever it's opened up, although that seems a rare occurrence these days.

I spoke to some locals walking their dogs as I examined the outside of the engine house and they said that the nearby quarry contained a history of cars on one corner as they'd been dumped in the water over the years to form a pile underwater with the oldest at the bottom.

They also told me that 21 people had died from the bends since the quarry had been flooded. The local diving club planned to set up a proper decompression chamber as well as a cafe, subject to planning permission, with the aim of developing the site for sustainable tourism. Perhaps this could help open up the engine house to visitors, too.

Two Lancashire boilers remain in the roofless boiler house round the back of the engine house

Meanwhile, the old buildings are crumbling and are literally full of pitfalls. My new guides told me that two kids got trapped in part of the old quarry and had to be rescued by a local farmer who happened to be passing. Having grown up around such old ruins I understand their fascination but know they need to be explored with caution and treated with respect.

The stump of the pump rod looks like an amputated limb.

Quite what future the Harvey's engine and engine house will have is anyone's guess. It was a gloomy day and I was pleased to have found this lovely old relic but it can't last for much longer without a concerted effort to do something about it.