Welsh Journals

THE OLD SLATE INDUSTRY OF PEMBROKESHIRE AND OTHER PARTS OF SOUTH WALES I. INTRODUCTION TO THE INDUSTRY THE old slate industry of Pembrokeshire is now largely forgotten, but it must have been well-known during most of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th, for its products were in demand in all parts of the British Isles, even in North Wales. This wide, if not heavy, demand must have been due to the attractive colouring of Pembrokeshire slates, ranging from purply-black to blue, green, grey, silver-grey, and even to the random rich orange and brown colourations of the 'rustic' slates. The best Pembrokeshire slate was of as good quality as the North Wales product, but it was not all good. Probably a higher proportion of the slate quarried in Pembrokeshire than of that in North Wales was used for slabs and carved products such as troughs and cisterns. Meaningful production statistics for the Pembrokeshire industry are not avail- able, but our estimate based on the few figures we have found and on the evid- ence of the numbers of workers is that the output was generally between 5 and 10 per cent of that of North Wales. While, therefore, the slate industry could not be said to dominate Pembrokeshire in the way it dominated the counties of Caer- narfon and Merioneth, it was nevertheless sufficiently significant to dominate cer- tain small parts of Pembrokeshire, notably Cilgerran and the parishes of Clydai and Llanrhian. Its fluctuations of fortune, which were probably greater than those of the industry in North Wales, must have brought great suffering to the people of those areas. There were about 100 slate quarries (i.e. quarries of which the product was regarded as slate in documents or advertisements) in Pembrokeshire, including those just on the Carmarthenshire side of the upper reaches of the Eastern Cle- ddau river. They were spread over a wide band stretching from St. Davids through North Pembrokeshire to its eastern border as shown in the map. The industry also spread thinly into central Carmarthenshire, south and north Cardi- ganshire, and even into Breconshire, but there were only about 20 quarries involved, all quite small. Table 1 lists and indicates the distribution of all the quarries or groups of quarries, dividing them into two classes, 'major' and 'minor'. While the division is to some extent arbitrary, the 'major' quarries or groups were those which had significant commercial exploitation and a sizeable production, while the 'minor' quarries were those of small size and very limited commercial exploitation. In spite of this distinction, no fewer than 21 out of the