Thread: Welsh slate quarries

Well as we sat having lunch on Sunday we were discussing where to go at Easter. One of the kids suggested Wales, so I suggested that the Snowdonia area might be worth a look, you know a national park with beautiful landscape and the tallest British mountain outside of Scotland, and purely coincidentally close to the area where Yellow Lake and Dragons Tongue hones come from.

Now if we do go I would quite like to see if I can either pick up a piece of slate to fashion as a hone or even if there are Museums which cover the hone making they would be interesting too.

Any recommendations?

Nic, I recommend that you PM Adrspach (Stepan) and Neil Miller. They are both authorities in my opinion, on British hones and where to source them in the wild. A_S (Alex) would also know, but I am not sure if he is still active here.

Good luck with your venture, and I would be very interested to see pictures of your raw material and finished hone(s) alike.

If you are after DT then only one person knows and that is the cutter in Inigo Jones as it does not come from one area.
For YL there are plenty known however remember that you are in National Park and will be hard to find owner of the property who will give or sell you the raw material.
Same goes with LI.
There is Welsh slate museum in LLanberis where you can admire history and colours od local slate.
Just to add Snowdonia mountains are high but they are still taken over by mountains of Lake District which are also out of Scotland.