Chwarel Y Penrhyn/Penrhyn Quarry

Chwarel lechi hanesyddol, ar un adeg y mwya yn y byd

Heddiw mae Chwarel Y Penrhyn yn adnabyddus fel safle ‘Zip World’. Ond mae ganddi hanes hir a hynod yn mynd nôl dros dau can mlynedd, hanes sy’n cynnwys caethwasiaeth, un o deuluoedd mwy arianog y byd, a geni’r symudiad undebau llafur.

Mae atsain y ‘streic fawr’ creulon 1900-1903 dal i’w deimlo yn y gymuned leol, gyda rhai teuluoedd a torodd y streic dal yn cael eu disgrifio fel ‘bradwyr’, a rhai pobol lleol dal yn amharod i ymweld a cartref y perchnogion, Castell Penrhyn.

A historic slate quarry, at one time the biggest in the world

Today the Penrhyn Quarry is known as the site of ‘Zip World’. But it has a long and fascinating history going back over two hundred years, a history that involves the slave trade, one of the world’s wealthiest families, and the birth of the trade unions movement.

The reverberations of the brutal ‘great strike’ of 1900-1903 are still felt in the local community, with some families who broke the strike still referred to as ‘bradwyr’ (traitors or scabs) and some people still refusing to set foot in the owners’ ancestral home, Castell Penrhyn.