Conglog quarry was a small enterprise situated to the north-west of Tanygrisiau, near Blaenau Ffestiniog in Wales. It was overshadowed by the much bigger Rhosydd quarry a little further to the west. It was active from 1854 to 1910, and was operated by an individual, two partnerships and four separate companies over this period.
History
Prior to 1854, the land on which the Conglog quarry was established was part of Cwmorthin Ucha farm, and was owned by William Ormsby-Gore, whose son, the Conservative politician John Ormsby-Gore, became Lord Harlech in 1876. He granted a two-year take-note to Robert Roberts and John Williams, both of Ffestiniog. Roberts was one of the surgeons at Oakeley quarry, and became the proprietor. He is thought to have provided the working capital to enable quarrying to begin. Williams was a quarryman. The take-note acted as temporary permission for the two men to extract minerals, in this case slate, and both men were named when the note was renewed in 1856 and in 1863. It is not known whether other men were employed to work the quarry during this period.
In 1866, only Roberts was named when the take-note was renewed, and he began trading as the Conglog Slate Company. The land he leased covered , and was mainly to the north of the stream and the track that ran through the site to reach Rhosydd. Shortly afterwards, Roberts was in possession of a 21-year lease, for which he was required to pay 2 shillings (10p) per ton for rock removed from the site, with a minimum charge of £25, corresponding to 250 tons, and an additional for any land used for tipping waste rock. The Rhosydd Quarry had been operating since 1853, and their quarry manager's house, Plas Cwmorthin, was located to the east of the Conglog site. In 1865/6, they also built Tan-yr-Allt, a row of cottages close to the Conglog mill site, to house some of the Rhosydd workers and their families. Conglog's new lease covered a larger area than the earlier take-notes, and in 1871 there was a dispute with Rhosydd over land in the south-west corner of the leased land. Agreement was eventually reached, with each undertaking keeping a part of the disputed land, and further land to the south of the river could be used for tipping by both companies. Tan-yr-Allt cottages were retained by Rhosydd, although there were to be surrendered if Roberts should require them.
In order to develop the quarry, Roberts sub-let part of the land to W H B Kempe and T M Matthews, who were from Devon. They paid £900 plus £25 per year for the lease, with an additional £2 per acre for any land they used for tipping, and one-twelfth of the value of any slate which they produced. The Conglog Slate and Slab Company Ltd was set up in 1873, with a working capital of £40,000, derived from 4,000 shares valued at £10 each. Kempe and Matthews sold their 21-year lease to the company for £25,000, and used the money to buy 2,000 shares. Many of the remaining shares were held by residents of Devon. The two men then sold 375 of their shares to Joseph Kellow, who became the agent and quarry engineer, and whose nephew Moses was responsible for the developments at Croesor quarry from 1895. Kempe and Matthews developed the underground workings, and Kellow recommended that £15,000 of the capital should be used for this purpose.
All was not well, as Matthews left the undertaking in 1873, and assigned his part of the lease to another shareholder called Edward Betteley, despite the fact that the company should have owned it by then. Betterley then sold it to a manganese mine proprietor called Charles John Sims. Roberts left in 1874, assigned his part of the lease to Kempe and Sims. The Cwmorthin quarry, which was further down the valley, had been served by the Cwmorthin Tramway since 1850, which descended via the Tan y Muriau and Village inclines to connect to the Ffestiniog Railway. The tramway was extended up the valley in 1874, to reach the Conglog mill. Seven years later, the company was being wound-up. The man in charge of this was Thomas Horswill from Tavistock in Devon, who had been the accountant and secretary since the formation of the company in 1873. He discovered that Kempe and Matthews had never assigned their original lease to the company. As Kempe had died, and Matthews was "insane", this presented a problem, but somehow he managed to resolve it, and sold the lease to two of the shareholders, Betteley and Gillow, for £850, the latter a doctor from Torquay.