There's Gold in them thar Welsh Hills

There's Gold in them thar Welsh Hills

There's Gold in them thar Welsh Hills

Wales once mined a variety of minerals including gold, both north and south, tin, copper, lead, zinc as well as slate, granite, limestone, sandstone and coal.

Surely no regular short breaks in Wales visitor has not heard of Welsh gold, still to be seen in jewellers' shops and always available when a member of the Royal family gets married. It is highly prized because of its origin and its scarcity, occurring in only two distinct areas of Wales - in the north in a band stretching from Barmouth towards Snowdon via Dolgellau, at Gwynfynydd near Ganllwyd and the Clogau mine near Bontddu, and in the south in small quantities in the Cothi Valley at Dolaucothi where the Romans mined it. The Dolaucothi mine is near Pumsaint in Carmarthenshire, donated to the National Trust in 1941, can be visited by short breaks in Wales tourists. It is believed to have been opened in the Bronze Age and was closed in 1938. A hoard of gold objects was found near the village close to the mines in the 18th century and is now on display in the British Museum. Why not, the short breaks in Wales tourist may ask, in the National Museum in Cardiff?

The Gwynfynydd Gold Mines near Dolgellau, discovered in 1860, closed only in the late 1990s, when it was reported that the final traces of extractable gold were removed from the mines and the surrounding spoil.

Nearby is perhaps the best known of the Welsh mines, the Clogau mine, which, many short breaks in Wales visitors have heard of. After producing copper and a little lead for some years, it developed into gold production in 1862 and continued to operate until 1911, during which time over 165,000 tones of ore were mined, producing 78,507 troy ounces (2.442 kg of gold). It has re-opened several times on a small scale for special, usually Royal, occasions and last re-opened in 1998, and Clogau gold is still available, albeit expensive because of its rarity. All female members of the Royal family since the Queen Mother have had wedding rings made of Welsh gold, including Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and the Queen was presented with a kilogram of Welsh gold on her 60th birthday in 1986. As for Welsh silver, the short breaks in Wales tourist will find that the industry was centred on the upland areas of the River Ystwyth and River Rheidol, the largest at Cwm Ystwyth and Cwm Rheidol, where many abandoned mines scatter the landscape.

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