Beneath the hills around Bwlchgwyn lay the resources that would transform a scattered upland community into a growing industrial village.

Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the landscape was worked for lead, coal, ironstone, limestone, sandstone and silica. Mines and quarries provided employment, attracted new families to the area and helped shape the roads, railways and settlements that developed around them.

The lead-mining boom of the mid-nineteenth century was particularly important, while later silica quarrying would reshape the landscape on an enormous scale — even consuming much of the ancient hillfort at Fron Heulog and eventually threatening parts of the village itself.

This is a story of miners and quarrymen, industrial ambition, dangerous work, changing landscapes and a community whose growth was intimately connected with the ground beneath its feet.

We're still digging into the mines, quarries, people and industries that made Bwlchgwyn.

Bwlchgwyn's Industrial Past is coming soon…