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Slate - it's proper posh (Read 12423 times)

andy popp

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Slate - it's proper posh
July 28, 2021, 06:07:07 pm
The Gwynedd slate landscape has been awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/welsh-slate-landscape-becomes-uks-newest-world-heritage-site

I think this is a remarkable and very welcome designation. There are some incredble stats in the article; for example, in 1830, half the buildings in New York were roofed with Welsh slate. The article doesn't mention this, but I would interested to know if the official communication says anything about the landscape's post-industrial life, including as a setting for leisure activities.

This comes shortly after Liverpool's deselection last week, a decision I understand but disagree with.

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#1 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 07:32:12 am
I totally agree with you Andy. I've always thought the slate quarries were incredibly beautiful places. One of the most inspiring things I've ever read on climbing was Paul Pritchard's piece slateheads in OTE many years ago.

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#2 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 07:46:57 am
Don't forget Grimer's Jamcrack podcast with Paul Pritchard reading the piece as well...reckon I've listened to it about 10 times, the combination of the prose, the accent and the delivery lends it a really evocative air.

SA Chris

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#3 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 08:45:57 am

This comes shortly after Liverpool's deselection last week, a decision I understand but disagree with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_UNESCO_World_Heritage_Sites

Interesting read.

I think it's great news for the quarries, I find them fascinating places.

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#4 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 09:33:30 am
Given the strong class divide in that industry, there’s some irony in calling the quarries posh. Unless you’re English, of course…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_industry_in_Wales

andy popp

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#5 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 09:42:33 am
Yes, the thread title is very deliberately ironic.

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#6 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 10:13:46 am
I totally agree with you Andy. I've always thought the slate quarries were incredibly beautiful places. One of the most inspiring things I've ever read on climbing was Paul Pritchard's piece slateheads in OTE many years ago.

Guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think they are awesome in a post apocalypse way but overall as ugly as fuck and ruin the mountain landscapes.

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#7 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 10:16:10 am
One of my favourite short climbing films, in which Pritchard and Dawes return to the Rainbow Slab:


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#8 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 10:16:53 am
They have an eerie charm but overall I’d take Cloggy over Dal’s Hole.

Yes, the thread title is very deliberately ironic.
;D

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#9 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 10:21:36 am
They're both. Ugliness-beauty duality. Hideous scars on the landscape, but hideously impressive and dramatic. Masses of disturbing and desolate choss, but close up some truly aesthetic sheets of austere and subtly tinted rock.

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#10 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 10:57:33 am
They're both. Ugliness-beauty duality. Hideous scars on the landscape, but hideously impressive and dramatic. Masses of disturbing and desolate choss, but close up some truly aesthetic sheets of austere and subtly tinted rock.

THISSSSSSS. And freighted with so much rich and painful human history, of all the people who worked there. These are haunted landscapes.

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#11 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 11:07:43 am
It must have been incredibly dangerous work, wonder how many lives were lost?

andy popp

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#12 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 11:12:22 am
Yes. I don't see how they can ruin anything. This isn't wilderness. They are simply there, another integral part of a landscape shaped by humans in many ways over millennia.

As an aside. I once picked up an Aussie or Kiwi (sorry, can't remember which now) hitcher as I headed to 'Beris. As we came to the point coming down the Pass at which the spoil heaps are suddenly revealed, he uttered the immortal line: "Fuck me, you've got a lot of gravel."

And, yes, the film of Paul and Johnny returning to the Rainbow is lovely.

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#13 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 11:34:14 am
It must have been incredibly dangerous work, wonder how many lives were lost?

There's a route named '362', it's how many quarry workers died just in Dinorwig. Not far off the number of UK military killed in Afghanistan..

When you think how many Welsh slate quarries and mines there are dotted all over, the total number of workers killed in the production of slate would have been immense. The history is worth learning, it was another form of slavery going on closer to home, during and long after the more well know atlantic slaving. Imposed on cheap Welsh labour by wealthy capitalists.

Funny to think the working quarry in Bethesda is a UNESCO site. It's a shit hole.

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#14 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 12:14:20 pm
There's a point somewhere about designer danger fabricated on the canvas of previous hard graft. People with time on their hands dancing around on the slabs formed by people with less choices, and perhaps Sunday off for a proper wash and clean clothes. Something something.

Can't believe that movie is 10 years old now!

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#15 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 12:30:50 pm
It must have been incredibly dangerous work, wonder how many lives were lost?

There's a route named '362', it's how many quarry workers died just in Dinorwig. Not far off the number of UK military killed in Afghanistan..

When you think how many Welsh slate quarries and mines there are dotted all over, the total number of workers killed in the production of slate would have been immense. The history is worth learning, it was another form of slavery going on closer to home, during and long after the more well know atlantic slaving. Imposed on cheap Welsh labour by wealthy capitalists.


Been doing some reading, interestign stuff - there must have been masses of horrible injuries too, and from what I can see, a lot of long term respiratory issues. 200 years of operation, and stopped about when I was born.

andy popp

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#16 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 12:36:43 pm
It must have been incredibly dangerous work, wonder how many lives were lost?
There's a route named '362', it's how many quarry workers died just in Dinorwig.

Immense and terrible as that number is, I'm actually a little surprised it's not higher.

That said (and I might be about to make myself really unpopular), we don't need to make erroneous comparisons to the Atlantic slave trade/slavery in the Americas to acknowledge the sufferings endured by Welsh slate mining communities. The comparison doesn't stand and doesn't serve either group well.

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#17 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 12:47:45 pm
Fair point. But the term ‘slavery’ seems an apt one to describe the power imbalance and working conditions of the slate quarrying industry.

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#18 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 01:03:14 pm
It must have been incredibly dangerous work, wonder how many lives were lost?

There's a route named '362', it's how many quarry workers died just in Dinorwig. Not far off the number of UK military killed in Afghanistan..

When you think how many Welsh slate quarries and mines there are dotted all over, the total number of workers killed in the production of slate would have been immense. The history is worth learning, it was another form of slavery going on closer to home, during and long after the more well know atlantic slaving. Imposed on cheap Welsh labour by wealthy capitalists.


Been doing some reading, interestign stuff - there must have been masses of horrible injuries too, and from what I can see, a lot of long term respiratory issues. 200 years of operation, and stopped about when I was born.

Yeah, I have a non-climber friend whose great-grandad (IIRC) was a quarryman around there; he was in charge of blasting because he was deaf already so it didn't matter that the job inevitably destroyed your hearing. This is brutal industrial history.

I love "362" as a route name because it's climbers remembering and respecting the quarrymen.

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#19 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 01:03:30 pm
 :pissed:p
Fair point. But the term ‘slavery’ seems an apt one to describe the power imbalance and working conditions of the slate quarrying industry.

…. Tin mines, Lead mines, Coal mines, Mills, even Farms.

Our history really does float on oceans of working class blood, doesn’t it?

Possibly, having the right skin colour made escaping that fate somewhat easier; but in the grand scheme, the slaves and the labouring classes, sat a couple of steps apart in the basement of a rather tall building.

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#20 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 01:13:32 pm
There's a point somewhere about designer danger fabricated on the canvas of previous hard graft. People with time on their hands dancing around on the slabs formed by people with less choices, and perhaps Sunday off for a proper wash and clean clothes. Something something.

You could also say essentially the same thing in a non-pejorative way - people in a brighter time expressing their freedom by creating meaning and beauty on the scars of a painful past.

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#21 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 01:18:47 pm
It must have been incredibly dangerous work, wonder how many lives were lost?
There's a route named '362', it's how many quarry workers died just in Dinorwig.

Immense and terrible as that number is, I'm actually a little surprised it's not higher.


I read that as being in just Dinorwig Quarry itself, which makes it considerable. I think the slate mines were far more dangerous.

andy popp

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#22 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 01:27:47 pm
Fair point.

Thanks Pete. It's the historian in me, I just can't help being a real stickler/boring pedant on this point.

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#23 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 02:07:12 pm
Quote from: SA Chris
I read that as being in just Dinorwig Quarry itself, which makes it considerable. I think the slate mines were far more dangerous.

Yes 362 deaths was just Dinorwig quarry supposedly. One among many. When you consider some of the underground mining operations around Blaenau.. cwmorthin mine for e.g. supposedly had the nickname ‘the abattoir’.

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#24 Re: Slate - it's proper posh
July 29, 2021, 03:16:34 pm
Imposed on cheap Welsh labour by wealthy capitalists.


Something I'm interested in - and perhaps Andy might have an insight into - is how much labour mobility was possible in the era of the slate mines? I mean, at one time everyone in the UK lived in the countryside or small towns, and then a huge number of them lived in big cities, so clearly people did move. I know from my own family history that my ancestors on one side moved from Norfolk to Leeds in the early 19th century, and on the other side from Ireland to Manchester somewhat later. In fact of the Manchester lot my direct ancestor was the only one of his family not to go to America in the Edwardian period.

So what was stopping the Welsh miners from leaving this clearly awful industrial environment?

 

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