Maenofferen Quarry was a major slate quarry in the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog and one of the major users of the Ffestiniog Railway. It continues to produces slate on a limited scale under the ownership of the nearby Llechwedd quarry
Maenofferen was first worked for slate by men from the nearby Diphwys quarry shortly after 1800. By 1848 slate was being shipped via the Ffestiniog Railway, but traffic on the railway ceased in 1850. In 1857 traffic resumed briefly and apart from a gap in 1865, a steady flow of slate was dispatched via the railway. The initial quarry on the site was known as the David Jones quarry which was the highest and most easterly of what became the extensive Maenofferen complex.
In 1861 the Maenofferen Slate Quarry Co. Ltd. was incorporated, producing around 400 tons of slate that year. The company leased a wharf at Porthmadog in 1862 and shipped finished slate over the Ffestiniog Railway the following year.
During the ninteenth century the quarry flourished and expanded, extending its workings underground and further downhill towards Blaenau Ffestiniog. By 1897 it employed 429 people with almost half of those working underground. The Ffestiniog Railway remained the quarry's major outlet for its products. Slate was sent via the Rhiwbach Tramway which ran through the quarry.
In 1920 the company alleviated its shipping costs by building a new incline connecting its mill to the Votty & Bowydd quarry and reaching agreement to ship its products via that company's incline connection to the Ffestiniog Railway at Duffws.
In 1928 Maeofferen purchased the Rhiwbach quarry, continuing to work this site and its associated Rhiwbach Tramway until 1953.
Underground production at Maenofferen ceased in November 1999 and with it the end of large-scale underground working for slate in north Wales. Production of slate has since recommenced on the combined Maenofferen site, consisting of "untopping" underground workings to recover slate from the supporting pillars of the chambers.
Blaenau Ffestiniog Slate Quarries