For more than 200 years, miners extracted slate from Mount Snowdon, much of the work done by candlelight. In the process, they created a maze of tunnels. "It goes miles that way, and it goes miles ...

slate accounted for half of north Wales' income - and it even rivalled the scale of coal mining in the south. Though as soon as they had arrived, the good times were about to peter out.

Not only does it hold a history of the slate mining and the men and ponies participating in this Lake District industry and the landscape there, it also holds a part of our building history.