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The Grade II listed church in Llanllechid — dedicated to Llechid, a sixth-century female Welsh saint — was built in 1844 at a cost of around £2500 to replace an earlier church dating back to the late 15th century which stood nearby. The newer church was constructed in a neo-Norman style from local granite and limestone and is an early example of the work of diocesan architect Henry Kennedy. The design was controversial at the time and met with some criticism.

Although the churchyard is still owned by The Church In Wales, the church itself was closed around 2002 and in October 2010 Gwynedd Council conditionally approved plans to convert it into a three-bedroom dwelling.

A Topographical Dictionary of Wales, Samuel Lewis, 1849 (British History Online);
St Llechid’s Church (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales)

‘Dark Places’ on YouTube

Blaen-y-nant Molybdenum Mine
Braichmelyn
Coed y Dinas Copper Mine
Croesor Quarry
Cwm Ceunant Copper Mine
Dinorwic Quarry
Dorothea Quarry
Fron-boeth Quarry
Glyn Rhonwy Isaf Quarry
Caseg Valley
Moel Faban Quarry

Rhosydd Quarry
Tan-y-garth Arsenic Mine
Dinas Tunnel, Tregarth
Dolbadarn Castle
Roughcastle Tunnel, Falkirk
Llanberis Bomb Store
Llanddulas Jetty
Penrhyn Quarry
ROC Llangefni
Coast Artillery School, Great Orme

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The former estate of Edmonstone lies between the new Royal Infirmary at Little France to the northwest and the village of Danderhall to the east and is just within Edinburgh’s boundary with the county of Midlothian. In the 13th century the estate belonged to the Edmonstone family, a cadet branch of the House of Seton. From the 1620s it was owned by the Raith family and it subsequently passed by marriage into the hands of the Wauchopes.

There was originally a castle, upon whose site a mansion was built. The latter appears in maps as early as 1682. Parts of the house were rebuilt following damage by fires on two separate occasions: once around 1800 and again in 1830. The mansion was demolished in the 1950s, with only ruins of the adjoining stable block now remaining. Other surviving structures include an ice house next to the stable block, a walled garden, ha-has and boundary walls, and gateways and lodges to the south and east. The lodge at the east entrance, on The Wisp, is a private residence and that at the south entrance, on the A7 Old Dalkeith Road, a vandalised ruin.

Edmonstone Estate forms part of Edinburgh’s Green Belt. It has nonetheless been the subject of various planning applications over the years. EDI — a development company owned by Edinburgh City Council — purchased 150 acres of land from the Don-Wauchope family in a £20m deal in April 2004. At the time, grand plans were unveiled for a giant woodland park with paths and cycle routes. Initial public access to the new recreational open space was to have been provided by the end of 2005.

By the end of 2004 developers Boskabelle had lodged a planning application to build a £30m 80-bed private hospital at the site of the former mansion. Existing structures were to be renovated and incorporated into the design and existing woodland and parkland were to be managed and landscaped for public recreational use. In January 2009 further plans were submitted for a care home in the Walled Garden and a self-contained 170-home ‘care village’ next to the proposed hospital. And in May 2011 it was announced that Isle of Man-based developers Baywater IOM had different ideas for the estate and intended to seek planning consent for a supermarket, a hotel and 200 homes — in a ‘bid to kickstart’ regeneration of the Little France area.

Gardens and designed landscapes surveys – Edmonstone survey (Edinburgh City Council);
City maps out plan for vast £20m park (The Scotsman, 22 April 2004);
New hospital plan for ERI medical zone (The Scotsman, 24 December 2004);
Planners back ‘care village’ on green belt land near ERI (The Scotsman, 10 January 2009);
Bid to kickstart estate plans may stir up local resistance (The Scotsman, 12 May 2011)

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Construction of an Industrial Museum in Chambers Street in central Edinburgh started in 1861 with Prince Albert laying the foundation stone. The museum was built in phases with the first section opening in 1866 and featuring the four-storey cast-iron Grand Gallery inspired by The Crystal Palace. Construction of the original building was completed in 1888. In 1904 it was renamed the Royal Scottish Museum. In 1985 it merged with the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland in Queen Street and when the latter closed in 1995, the Chambers Street building became the Royal Museum.

In 1998 an adjoining building, modern in design and clad in golden Moray sandstone, was opened to house the Museum of Scotland.

In 2006 the interconnected Royal Museum and Museum of Scotland merged to form the National Museum of Scotland. The Victorian building closed in 2008 and re-opened in July 2011 after a £47m refurbishment. As part of the renovation the vaulted basement below the Grand Gallery was converted into a street-level entrance hall. The museum now has 20,000 objects on display in 36 galleries divided into five thematic collections: the natural world, art and design, science and technology, world cultures, and the history of Scotland.

National Museum of Scotland;
National Museum of Scotland (Wikipedia);
National Museum of Scotland to reopen after £47m refit (BBC News, 28 July 2011)

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Prestongrange is located in East Lothian, between the towns of Musselburgh and Prestonpans. The earliest documented extraction of coal there was in 1194 when the Cistercian monks from Newbattle Abbey exploited this natural resource. The nearby port at Morrison’s Haven was also established around this time to transport the coal. The harbour was built in the 16th century and was in use until the 20th — it was filled in and landscaped in the 1960s.

In nearby Prestonpans, coal from Prestongrange was used to boil sea water in large pans to produce salt. By the beginning of the 15th century there were 10 salt works there. This activity later developed into a more sophisticated chemical industry, producing, for example, sulphuric acid. This was one of several industries that sprung up in the area on account of the ready availability of fuel, leading to Prestongrange becoming an integrated industrial complex. There was a glassworks there in the 17th century and a pottery in the 18th. Coal mining was industrialised in the 19th century, with Prestongrange Colliery being established in 1820. The site was also home to a large brickworks, which produced bricks, tiles and drainage pipes. Scotland’s first deep shaft (140 m) was sunk here in 1829. A second-hand Cornish beam engine, which had previously served in four different mines in Cornwall, was purchased and installed in 1874 to drain the mine, which allowed deeper working to be carried out.

Industrial activity peaked at the start of the 20th century when over 1000 workers were employed between the brickworks and the coal mine. The colliery closed in 1962 followed by the brickworks in 1975.

After the colliery shut down clearance of the site started, but a halt was later called to this when plans for creating an open-air museum were adopted. Many of the site’s structures were, however, lost in the process. In 1984 the Scottish Mining Museum opened at Prestongrange. The site remained part of this museum, which was based at Lady Victoria Colliery in Newtongrange, which had closed in 1981, until 1992, when East Lothian Council Museum Service took over its operation. It was rebranded as Prestongrange Industrial Heritage Museum on account of the other industries which had also shared the site.

Prestongrange (prestongrange.org); Prestongrange Industrial Heritage Museum (Wikipedia)

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The 35-mile-long Forth & Clyde Canal was built between 1768 and 1790 to provide a shipping route across central Scotland from the Firth of Forth in the east to the Firth of Clyde in the west. A route from its eastern end to Edinburgh — a distance of about 31 miles — was created with the construction of the Union Canal between 1818 and 1822. The two canals were connected by a flight of 11 locks at Falkirk, where their difference in height was 35 metres.

Competition from the railways spelt the demise of the canals. Commercial use of the Union Canal came to an end in the 1930s and the flight of locks at Falkirk was filled in and built over. The Forth & Clyde Canal ultimately fell into disuse in the 1960s when it was closed in order to avoid having to build a motorway crossing.

British Waterways, with support from a number of sources, including National Lottery funding via the Millennium Commission, led an £84.5m project to revitalise the two canals. The Millennium Link was the UK’s largest canal restoration project and its centrepiece was the Falkirk Wheel — the world’s first and only rotary boat lift.

The Falkirk Wheel was officially opened in May 2002 and cost £17.5m. Its overall diameter is 35 metres and its shape was inspired by a Celtic double-headed axe. Boats can transfer through the lift in about 15 minutes, with a half rotation of the wheel taking 4 minutes, during which time a water-filled gondola at the lower level swaps position with its counterpart at the upper level. The wheel is always in perfect balance due to Archimedes’ principle — a floating object displaces its own weight in water — so as a boat enters a gondola, a volume of water equal to the weight of the boat is forced out, preserving the original net weight of the gondola plus water. The energy required to operate the wheel is only 1.5 kWh, roughly equivalent to that needed to boil 8 kettles of water.

The upper level of the Wheel is connected via a reinforced-concrete aqueduct to a 180-metre-long tunnel ending in a basin which in turn connects to the Union Canal via a double lock. The Roughcastle tunnel was built when the Wheel was constructed so as not to disturb the Roman remains of the Antonine Wall, under which it passes.

The Falkirk Wheel (thefalkirkwheel.co.uk); Falkirk Wheel (Wikipedia)

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There were many fire hazards associated with 18th century textile mills — wooden floors, combustible atmospheres heavy with suspended fibre particles, and illumination by candles, to name a few — and many did indeed burn down. It was against this background that surveyor, engineer, wine merchant and future Mayor of Shrewsbury Charles Bage developed the fire-proof construction techniques employed in his design of Benyon, Bage and Marshall’s Ditherington Flax Mill. Opening in 1797, this was the world’s first iron-framed building — a pioneering innovation in the building technology that would ultimately lead to the construction of skyscrapers. Cast-iron columns had already been used in mills, but Bage’s design utilised these in conjunction with iron beams to support the brick-vaulted ceiling spans.

The site was developed in several phases and operated as a flax mill from 1797 to 1886. The original timber-framed Cross Mill burnt down in 1811 and was replaced the following year with an iron-framed structure of a design similar to that of the Main Mill. The complex was converted into a maltings in 1897-98 by William Jones (Maltsters), which went out of business in 1934. During World War II the site was used by the army as a barracks. The brewers Ansells, which became part of Allied Breweries in 1961, acquired the complex and operated the maltings from 1948 until its final closure in 1987. Vacant since then, the site is now in the hands of English Heritage, which is, in conjunction with Shropshire Council, the Homes and Communities Agency and regional development agency Advantage West Midlands, exploring the possibilities for the future of the site, most of the structures of which are listed buildings. Planning permission for mixed-use redevelopment of the site was granted in November 2010. The plans involve the demolition of non-listed buildings and the conversion of the listed ones to create homes and business space.

Flax production at the mill involved the following processes. First of all, partially pre-prepared imported flax was hackled (combed to separate long from short fibres) in the Cross Mill. Next, in the Main Mill it was carded (further combing), roved (stretched and joined into lengths) and then spun. And finally the resulting yarn was dyed in vats in the Dye House.

The malt kiln was completed in 1898. Various other structural changes, such as the blocking off of mill windows, the demolition of redundant structures, and the construction of the wooden hoist tower with its wrought-iron ‘Jubilee’ coronet, were also made at the time of conversion. The concrete silos were a late addition to the complex, being built in the 1950s and 60s.

Malting is the process, in which the enzymes necessary to convert the grain starches into sugars are developed, of turning barley into malt for use in brewing, for example. The production method at the maltings was as follows. Barley was first of all steeped for several days in metal tanks with three or four changes of cold water. It was then emptied out and spread across the mill floors and turned over twice daily. Once germination started — after three or four days — the barley was then conveyed to the kiln and spread out over perforated floors heated by coal fires. And finally, after drying in the kiln, the finished product would then be stored in silos ready for dispatch.

Former Ditherington Flax Mill and Attached Former Malting Kiln (English Heritage);
Friends of the Flaxmill Maltings;
Shrewsbury Flax Mill plans approved (5 November 2010)

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Now part of Network Rail’s Welsh Marches Line, the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway was originally constructed from 1850 to 1853. To save costs, it was initially laid as a single line with the intention of doubling it later, which was done in 1862. All passenger trains on the line are operated by Arriva.

A public footpath from the A49 Hereford Road close to the Bayston Hill Roundabout on the Shrewsbury Bypass crosses the line just south of the A5.

Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway (Wikipedia)

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Bayston Hill Quarry, on the southern outskirts of Shrewsbury, is a roadstone quarry owned by Tarmac Ltd and is one of the UK’s largest producers of high-quality aggregates. The rough surface of the gritstone extracted there provides it with a high Polished Stone Value (a measure of its resistance to polishing), making the crushed rock an ideal ingredient in the manufacture of high-grip road-surfacing products. Aggregate from the quarry was used in the surfacing of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix’s Yas Marina circuit, which opened in 2009.

The quarry is 75 m deep, 1.1 km long and covers an area of 30 hectares. Extensive landscaping of the periphery of the site has been undertaken, using clay overburden to form screening mounds along the north-west edge of the quarry.

The workings feature in maps as early as 1752, but it is a recent discovery at the quarry from long before that which has forced archaeologists to re-evaluate the engineering accomplishments of pre-Roman Iron-Age Britons. The route of a ‘Roman’ road here was already known and in 2009 quarry operations were about to destroy a 400 m stretch of its path. This gave archaeologists a chance to study an excavated section. The cambered road was six metres wide, built on a hardcore and clay foundation, and cobbled with stones from the River Severn. It has been dated to the first century BC, pre-dating the Roman invasion by about 100 years.

Britannia Superior: Why Roman roads may not be quite as Roman as we think (the guardian, 15 March 2011);
P. W. Scott, Colin Malcolm Bristow, Industrial minerals and extractive industry geology

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The graveyard at Longden Road in Shrewsbury is the town’s main municipal cemetery and is run for Shropshire Council by The Co-operative.

Shrewsbury Cemetery (Shropshire Council)