Overview
- Talysarn was relocated about a century ago roughly a kilometre west as the Nantlle Valley’s small pits consolidated into the vast Dorothea quarry.
- Dorothea operated from 1820 until closing in 1970, after which the pit flooded to create a lake reported to be over 100m deep.
- The 18th-century Plas Talysarn was sold to the quarry company in 1905 and was last lived in in 1946 before a nearby landslip hastened its abandonment.
- Photographers Tony Harnett and Daniel Start document moss-covered buildings, a Cornish beam engine and chapel remains, with Start dubbing the site a “Welsh Angkor Wat.”
- The landscape’s past dangers and disputes include an 1884 flood that killed quarrymen and a 1982 phone-box episode later described by Dafydd Wigley as involving unauthorized secret agents.