A chiselled landscape

This dramatic view brings together two Welsh icons. In the distance sits the country’s highest mountain, Snowdon, while the towering walls of slate in the foreground nod to an industry that has reshaped the landscape here over the centuries. This is the former Dinorwic quarry in the county of Gwynedd, once the second-largest slate quarry in the world after nearby Penrhyn. Slate was first extracted here by the Romans but the process really gathered steam during the industrial revolution, when it became known as the industry that ‘roofed the world’. At its height in the late 19th century, thousands of men were employed at Dinorwic and the Welsh slate industry as a whole extracted about 485,000 tonnes a year.
© Alan Novelli/Alamy Stock Photo