Slate Landscape is a World Treasure

 

It's official! We are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The landscape created by the Victorian slate mining boom is up there with the pyramids and Taj Mahal.

The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales has become the UK’s newest UNESCO World Heritage Site, having been granted the accolade today, at the 44th session of the World Heritage Committee.

Heritage Bid Approved.

The landscape has become the UK’s 32nd UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the 4th in Wales, following the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, Blaenavon Industrial Landscape and the Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd.

🔴 BREAKING

Wales' Slate Landscape has been inscribed as the UK's 33rd UNESCO World Heritage Site. Llongyfarchiadau!🎉

The status recognises 1,800 years of slate mining, the people, culture & 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 language, & how the landscape roofed the 19th-century 🌍https://t.co/W0weYXje2p pic.twitter.com/j8fxQPBRgE

— UNESCO UK (@UNESCOUK) July 28, 2021

The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales, which runs through Gwynedd, became the world leader for the production and export of slate in the 1800s. Slate has been quarried in the area for over 1,800 years and was used to build parts of the Roman fort in Segontium in Caernarfon and Edward I’s castle in Conwy.  When the industrial revolution kicked-in that demand surged as cities across the world expanded with slate from the mines at Gwynedd being widely used to roof workers’ homes, public buildings, places of worship and factories.

By the 1890s the Welsh slate industry employed approximately 17,000 workers and produced almost 500,000 tonnes of slate a year, around a third of all roofing slate used in the world in the late 19th century. The industry had a huge impact on global architecture with Welsh slate used on a number of buildings, terraces and palaces across the globe including Westminster Hall in London’s Houses of Parliament, the Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, Australia and Copenhagen City Hall, Denmark. In 1830, half the buildings in New York had roofs made of Welsh slate.

Centuries of mining in the area transformed the landscape on a monumental scale with the inscription reflecting the important role this region played in ‘roofing the 19th century world’.