Penrhyn Quarry
The Penrhyn Quarry is a slate quarry located near Bethesda in north Wales. At the end of the nineteenth century it was the world's largest slate quarry, it has since been superseded in size by slate quarries in China and the USA. Penrhyn is still Britain's largest slate quarry but its workforce is now nearer 200; the first reference to slate extraction at Penrhyn is from 1570, when the quarry is mentioned in a Welsh poem. The quarry was developed in the 1770s by Richard Pennant Baron Penrhyn. Much of his early working was for local use only as no large scale transport infrastructure was developed until Pennant's involvement. From on, slates from the quarry were transported to the sea at Port Penrhyn on the narrow gauge Penrhyn Quarry Railway built in 1798, one of the earliest railway lines. In the 19th century the Penrhyn Quarry, along with the Dinorwic Quarry, dominated the Welsh slate industry; the quarry holds a significant place in the history of the British Labour Movement as the site of two prolonged strikes by workers demanding better pay and safer conditions.
The first strike lasted eleven months in 1896. The second lasted for three years. Known as "The Great Strike of Penrhyn", this was the longest dispute in British industrial history. In the longer term the dispute cast the shadow of unreliability on the North Welsh slate industry, causing orders to drop and thousands of workers to be laid off. From 1964 until 2007 it was owned and operated by Alfred McAlpine PLC. In 2007 it was purchased by renamed Welsh Slate Ltd.. Kevin Lagan and his son Peter are now directors of Welsh Slate Ltd which includes the Oakeley quarry in Blaenau Ffestiniog, the Cwt Y Bugail quarry and the Pen Yr Orsedd quarry; the Lagan Group was itself acquired by the Leicestershire-based Breedon Group in 2018. A part of the site no longer in use for slate extraction is the site of a new adventure tourism facility operated by Zipworld; the zip line Velocity 2 flies above an abandoned flooded quarry. Welsh slate such as that quarried at Penrhyn was designated by the International Union of Geological Sciences as a'Global Heritage Stone Resource' early in 2019 in recognition of its significant contribution to world architectural heritage.
Blondin - originated at Penrhyn The 2nd Baron Penrhyn - who closed the quarry in response to a strike in 1897 Hughes, J. Elwyn, Hughes and Wood, Dennis S.. The Penrhyn Quarry:Yesterday and Today. Penrhyn Quarries Ltd. CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list History and photos "The Penrhyn Slate Quarry," in Saturday Magazine, No. 12, 8 September 1832, pp. 93. The Penrhyn Slate Quarries in North Wales circa 1858, in The Illustrated London News, Vol. XXXII, No. 913, Saturday, 17 April 1858, pp. 392-393. History of Bangor Blue Slates In Ireland
Penrhyn Castle
Penrhyn Castle is a country house in Llandygai, Gwynedd, North Wales, in the form of a Norman castle. It was a medieval fortified manor house, founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In 1438, Ioan ap Gruffudd was granted a licence to crenellate and he founded the stone castle and added a tower house. Samuel Wyatt reconstructed the property in the 1780s; the present building was created between about 1822 and 1837 to designs by Thomas Hopper, who expanded and transformed the building beyond recognition. However a spiral staircase from the original property can still be seen, a vaulted basement and other masonry were incorporated into the new structure. Hopper's client was George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the Penrhyn Estate on the death of his second cousin, The 1st Baron Penrhyn, who had made his fortune from slavery in Jamaica and local slate quarries; the eldest of George's two daughters, married an aristocratic Grenadier Guard, Edward Gordon Douglas, who, on inheriting the estate on George's death in 1840, adopted the hyphenated surname of Douglas-Pennant.
Edward, the grandson of The 14th Earl of Morton, was created The 1st Baron Penrhyn in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1866. The cost of the construction of this vast'castle' is disputed, difficult to work out as much of the timber came from the family's own forestry, much of the labour was acquired from within their own workforce at the slate quarry, it cost the Pennant family an estimated £150,000. This is the current equivalent to about £49,500,000. Penrhyn is one of the most admired of the numerous mock castles built in the United Kingdom in the 19th century; the castle is a picturesque composition that stretches over 600 feet from a tall donjon containing family rooms, through the main block built around the earlier house, to the service wing and the stables. It is built in a sombre style which allows it to possess something of the medieval fortress air despite the ground-level drawing room windows. Hopper designed all the principal interiors in a rich but restrained Norman style, with much fine plasterwork and wood and stone carving.
The castle has some specially designed Norman-style furniture, including a one-ton slate bed made for Queen Victoria when she visited in 1859. The 4th Baron Penrhyn died in June 1949, the castle and estate passed to his niece, Lady Janet Pelham, who, on inheritance, adopted the surname of Douglas-Pennant. In 1951, the castle and 40,000 acres of land were accepted by the treasury in lieu of death duties from Lady Janet, it now is open to the public. The site received 109,395 visitors in 2017. Penrhyn's attractions include a formal walled garden, extensive informal gardens, an adventure playground, picnic areas and woodland walks; the Penrhyn Castle Railway Museum, a narrow gauge railway museum. In the nineteenth century, Penrhyn Castle was the home of the Pennant family, owners of the Penrhyn slate quarry at Bethesda; the quarry was associated with the development of industrial narrow-gauge railways, in particular the Penrhyn Quarry Railway, one of the earliest industrial railways in the world.
The PQR ran close to Penrhyn Castle, when the castle was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1951 a small museum of industrial railway relics was created in the stable block. The first locomotive donated to the museum was Charles, one of the three remaining steam locomotives working on the PQR. Over the years a number of other significant British narrow-gauge locomotives and other artifacts have been added to the collection, it houses one of the finest art collections in Wales, with works by artists such as Canaletto, Richard Wilson, Carl Haag, Perino del Vaga, Palma Vecchio. The collection included a Rembrandt -; the family began collecting paintings from the early years of the 19th century. The castle has stunning views over the Menai Strait and Puffin Island. In 2014, David Haneke from the Welsh National Opera chose Penrhyn Castle as the location for the video design for the company's summer performance of Debussy's infamous The Fall of The House of Usher. Scenes filmed at the location were projected onto three separate screens during the performances.
A parkrun takes place in the grounds of the castle each Saturday morning and finishing at the castle gates. The fee to enter the castle grounds is waived for runners. Castles in Great Britain and Ireland List of castles in Wales List of gardens in Wales Penrhyn Castle information at the National Trust Illustrated Guide to Penrhyn Castle
OCLC
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Incorporated d/b/a OCLC is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs". It was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog in the world. OCLC is funded by the fees that libraries have to pay for its services. OCLC maintains the Dewey Decimal Classification system. OCLC began in 1967, as the Ohio College Library Center, through a collaboration of university presidents, vice presidents, library directors who wanted to create a cooperative computerized network for libraries in the state of Ohio; the group first met on July 5, 1967 on the campus of the Ohio State University to sign the articles of incorporation for the nonprofit organization, hired Frederick G. Kilgour, a former Yale University medical school librarian, to design the shared cataloging system.
Kilgour wished to merge the latest information storage and retrieval system of the time, the computer, with the oldest, the library. The plan was to merge the catalogs of Ohio libraries electronically through a computer network and database to streamline operations, control costs, increase efficiency in library management, bringing libraries together to cooperatively keep track of the world's information in order to best serve researchers and scholars; the first library to do online cataloging through OCLC was the Alden Library at Ohio University on August 26, 1971. This was the first online cataloging by any library worldwide. Membership in OCLC is based on use of services and contribution of data. Between 1967 and 1977, OCLC membership was limited to institutions in Ohio, but in 1978, a new governance structure was established that allowed institutions from other states to join. In 2002, the governance structure was again modified to accommodate participation from outside the United States.
As OCLC expanded services in the United States outside Ohio, it relied on establishing strategic partnerships with "networks", organizations that provided training and marketing services. By 2008, there were 15 independent United States regional service providers. OCLC networks played a key role in OCLC governance, with networks electing delegates to serve on the OCLC Members Council. During 2008, OCLC commissioned two studies to look at distribution channels. In early 2009, OCLC negotiated new contracts with the former networks and opened a centralized support center. OCLC provides bibliographic and full-text information to anyone. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat—the OCLC Online Union Catalog, the largest online public access catalog in the world. WorldCat has holding records from private libraries worldwide; the Open WorldCat program, launched in late 2003, exposed a subset of WorldCat records to Web users via popular Internet search and bookselling sites.
In October 2005, the OCLC technical staff began a wiki project, WikiD, allowing readers to add commentary and structured-field information associated with any WorldCat record. WikiD was phased out; the Online Computer Library Center acquired the trademark and copyrights associated with the Dewey Decimal Classification System when it bought Forest Press in 1988. A browser for books with their Dewey Decimal Classifications was available until July 2013; until August 2009, when it was sold to Backstage Library Works, OCLC owned a preservation microfilm and digitization operation called the OCLC Preservation Service Center, with its principal office in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The reference management service QuestionPoint provides libraries with tools to communicate with users; this around-the-clock reference service is provided by a cooperative of participating global libraries. Starting in 1971, OCLC produced catalog cards for members alongside its shared online catalog. OCLC commercially sells software, such as CONTENTdm for managing digital collections.
It offers the bibliographic discovery system WorldCat Discovery, which allows for library patrons to use a single search interface to access an institution's catalog, database subscriptions and more. OCLC has been conducting research for the library community for more than 30 years. In accordance with its mission, OCLC makes its research outcomes known through various publications; these publications, including journal articles, reports and presentations, are available through the organization's website. OCLC Publications – Research articles from various journals including Code4Lib Journal, OCLC Research, Reference & User Services Quarterly, College & Research Libraries News, Art Libraries Journal, National Education Association Newsletter; the most recent publications are displayed first, all archived resources, starting in 1970, are available. Membership Reports – A number of significant reports on topics ranging from virtual reference in libraries to perceptions about library funding. Newsletters – Current and archived newsletters for the library and archive community.
Presentations – Presentations from both guest speakers and OCLC research from conferences and other events. The presentations are organized into five categories: Conference presentations, Dewey presentations, Distinguished Seminar Series, Guest presentations, Research staff
Bangor, Gwynedd
Bangor is a city and community in Gwynedd, northwest Wales. It is the oldest city in Wales, one of the smallest cities in the United Kingdom. In Caernarfonshire, it is a university city with a population of 18,808 at the 2011 census, including around 10,500 students at Bangor University, it is one of only six places classed as a city in Wales, although it is only the 25th-largest urban area by population. At the 2001 census, 46.6% of the non-student resident population spoke Welsh. The origins of the city date back to the founding of a monastic establishment on the site of Bangor Cathedral by the Celtic saint Deiniol in the early 6th century AD. Bangor itself is an old Welsh word for a wattled enclosure, such as the one that surrounded the cathedral site; the present cathedral is a somewhat more recent building and has been extensively modified throughout the centuries. While the building itself is not the oldest, not the biggest, the bishopric of Bangor is one of the oldest in the UK. Another claim to fame is that Bangor has the longest High Street in Wales and the United Kingdom.
Friars School was founded as a free grammar school in 1557, the University College of North Wales was founded in 1884. In 1877, the former HMS Clio became a school ship, moored on the Menai Strait at Bangor, had 260 pupils. Closed after the end of hostilities of World War I, she was sold for scrap and broken up in 1919. During World War II, parts of the BBC evacuated to Bangor during the worst of the Blitz. In June 2012 Bangor was the first city in the UK to impose a city centre wide night time curfew on under-16s; the six-month trial was brought in by Gwynedd Council and North Wales police, but opposed by civil rights groups. Bangor has been unique outside of England in using the title of'city' by ancient prescriptive right, due to its long-standing cathedral. However, city status was conferred on it by the Queen in 1974. By means of various measures, it is one of the smallest cities in the UK. Using 2011 statistics, comparing Bangor to: Population of city council areas in Wales, is third with St Davids and St Asaph City council area size within Wales, is the second smallest city behind St Asaph Urban areas within Wales, is third placed behind St Davids and St Asaph City council area size within the UK, is fourth after the City of London, Wells and St Asaph Urban areas within the UK, is fifth placed Population of city council areas within the UK, is sixth.
Bangor lies on the coast of North Wales near the Menai Strait which separates the island of Anglesey from Gwynedd unitary authority, the town of Menai Bridge lying just over the strait. The combined population of the two amounts to 22,184 people as of the 2011 census. Bangor Mountain lies to the east of the main part of the city, but the large housing estate of Maesgeirchen built as council housing, is to the east of the mountain near Port Penrhyn. Bangor Mountain casts a shadow across the High Street, Glan Adda and Hirael areas, so that from November to March some parts of the High Street in particular receive no direct sunlight. Another ridge rises to the north of the High Street, dividing the city centre from the south shore of the Menai Strait. Bangor has two rivers within its boundaries; the River Adda is a culverted watercourse which only appears above ground at its western extremities near the Faenol estate, whilst the River Cegin enters Port Penrhyn at the eastern edge of the city. Port Penrhyn was an important port in the 19th century, exporting the slates produced at the Penrhyn Quarry.
Bangor railway station is located on the North Wales Coast Line from Chester to Holyhead. The A55 runs to the south of Bangor, providing a route to Holyhead and Chester; the nearest airport with international flights is 83 miles by road. Bangor lies at the western end of the North Wales Path, a 60 miles long-distance coastal walking route to Prestatyn. Bangor is on routes NCR 8 and NCR 85 of the National Cycle Network. Classical music is performed in Bangor, with concerts given in the Powis and Prichard-Jones Halls as part of the university's Music at Bangor concert series; the city is home to Storiel. A new arts centre complex, the replacement for Theatr Gwynedd, was scheduled for completion in the summer of 2014, but the opening was delayed until November 2015. Bangor hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1890, 1902, 1915, 1931, 1940, 1943, 1971 and 2005, as well as an unofficial National Eisteddfod event in 1874. Garth Pier is the second longest pier in Wales, the ninth longest in the British Isles, at 1,500 feet in length.
It was opened in 1893 and was a promenade pier, for the amusement of holiday-makers who could stroll among the pinnacle-roofed kiosks. In 1914 it was struck by a vessel; the damaged section was repaired temporarily by the Royal Engineers, but when in 1922, a permanent repair was contemplated, it was found that the damage was more severe than had been thought. The repairs were made at considerable cost and the pier remained open until 1974 when it was nearly condemned as being in poor condition, it was sold for a nominal price to Arfon Borough Council who proposed to demolish it, but the County Council, encouraged by local support, ensured that it survived by obtaining Grade II Listed building status for it. When it was listed that year, the British Listed Buildings inspector considered it to be "the best in Britain of t
Menai Strait
The Menai Strait is a narrow stretch of shallow tidal water about 25 km long, which separates the island of Anglesey from the mainland of Wales. The strait is bridged in two places: the Menai Suspension Bridge carrying the A5, Robert Stephenson's 1850 Britannia Tubular Bridge; the Britannia carried rail traffic in two wrought-iron rectangular box spans but after a disastrous fire in 1970, which left only the limestone pillars remaining, it was rebuilt as a steel box girder bridge, now carries both rail and road traffic. Between the two bridge crossings there is a small island in the middle of the strait, Ynys Gorad Goch, on which are built a house and outbuildings and around which are the significant remains of fish traps, no longer used; the strait varies in width from 400 metres from Fort Belan to Abermenai Point to 1,100 metres from Traeth Gwyllt to Caernarfon Castle. It narrows to 500 metres in the middle reaches and it broadens again. At Bangor, Garth Pier, it is 900 metres wide, it widens out, the distance from Puffin Island to Penmaenmawr is about 8 kilometres.
The differential tides at the two ends of the strait cause strong currents to flow in both directions through the strait at different times, creating dangerous conditions. One of the most dangerous areas of the strait is known as the Swellies between the two bridges. Here rocks near the surface cause over-falls and local whirlpools, which can be of considerable danger in themselves and cause small boats to founder on the rocks; this was the site of the loss of the training ship HMS Conway in 1953. Entering the strait at the Caernarfon end is hazardous because of the shifting sand banks that make up Caernarfon bar. On the mainland side at this point is Fort Belan, an 18th-century defensive fort built in the times of the American War of Independence; the present day channel is a result of glacial erosion of the bedrock along a line of weakness associated with the Menai Strait Fault System. During the series of Pleistocene glaciations a succession of ice-sheets moved from northeast to southwest across Anglesey and neighbouring Arfon scouring the underlying rock, the grain of which runs in this direction.
The result was a series of linear bedrock hollows across the region, the deepest of, flooded by the sea as world ocean levels rose at the end of the last ice age. The name Menai comes from main-aw or main-wy, meaning "narrow water."According to Heimskringla, the 11th century Norse-Gael ruler Echmarcach mac Ragnaill plundered in Wales with his friend, the Viking Guttorm Gunnhildsson. However they fought a battle at the Menai Strait. Guttorm won the battle by praying to Saint Olaf and Echmarcach was killed. In the 12th century, a Viking raid and battle in the Menai Strait are recounted in the Orkneyinga Saga as playing an important role in the life of Magnus Erlendsson, Earl of Orkney – the future Saint Magnus, he had a reputation for gentleness. Refusing to fight in the raid on Anglesey, he stayed on board his ship; this incident is recounted at length in the 1973 novel Magnus by Orcadian author George Mackay Brown, in the 1977 opera, The Martyrdom of St Magnus by Peter Maxwell Davies. The first of the opera's nine parts is called "The Battle of Menai Strait".
From the 1890s until 1963, the pleasure steamers of the Liverpool and North Wales Steamship Company would ply their main route from Liverpool and Llandudno along the Menai Strait, around Anglesey. After the company's voluntary liquidation in 1962, P and A Campbell took over the services for a while. Now, every year for two weeks in the summer, the MV Balmoral undertakes a similar service; the tidal effects observed along the banks of the strait can be confusing. A rising tide approaches from the south-west, causing the water in the strait to flow north-eastwards as the level rises; the tide flows around Anglesey until, after a few hours, it starts to flow into the strait in a south-westerly direction from Beaumaris. By the time this happens the tidal flow from the Caernarfon end is weakening and the tide continues to rise in height but the direction of tidal flow is reversed. A similar sequence is seen in reverse on a falling tide; this means that slack water between the bridges tends to occur one hour before high tide or low tide.
Theoretically it is possible to ford the strait in the Swellies at low water, spring tides when the depth may fall to less than 0.5 metres. However, at these times a strong current of around 4.8 knots is running, making the passage difficult. Elsewhere in the strait the minimum depth is never less than 2 metres until the great sand flats at Lavan sands are reached beyond Bangor; the tides carry large quantities of fish, the construction of Fish weirs on both banks and on several of the islands, helped make the Strait an important source of fish for many centuries. Eight of the numerous Menai Strait fish weirs are now Scheduled monuments; because the strait has such unusual tidal conditions, coupled with low wave heights because of its sheltered position, it presents a unique and diverse benthic ecology. The depth of the channel reaches 15 metres in places, the current can exceed 7 knots, it is rich in sponges. The existence of this unique ecology was a major factor in the establishment of Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences at Menai Bridge, as well as its status as a special area of conservation with marine components.
The waters are a proposed Marine Na
Deadweight tonnage
Deadweight tonnage or tons deadweight is a measure of how much weight a ship can carry, not its weight, empty or in any degree of load. DWT is the sum of the weights of cargo, fresh water, ballast water, provisions and crew. DWT is used to specify a ship's maximum permissible deadweight, although it may denote the actual DWT of a ship not loaded to capacity. Deadweight tonnage is a measure of a vessel's weight carrying capacity, does not include the weight of the ship itself, it should not be confused with displacement, which includes the ship's own weight, nor other volume or capacity measures such as gross tonnage or net tonnage. Deadweight tonnage was expressed in long tons but is now given internationally in tonnes. In modern international shipping conventions such as the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea and the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution From Ships, deadweight is explicitly defined as the difference in tonnes between the displacement of a ship in water of a specific gravity of 1.025 at the draft corresponding to the assigned summer freeboard and the light displacement of the ship.
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Afon Cegin
The Afon Cegin is a small river draining parts of North Wales and discharging to the Menai Strait at Porth Penrhyn. Its name means Kitchen River in English; the Cegin valley was industrialised in the 18th and 19th centuries with two separate railway lines conveying slate from quarries in the hills down to Porth Penrhyn to be shipped out to destinations across the world. Much evidence of this still remains with one of the old railway beds now used as the Lôn Las Ogwen cycle-way and footpath. Just above Port Penrhyn a series of connected old bridges cross the Cegin; this complex is a listed building
