Pen Yr Orsedd Quarry, Nantlle, Caernarfon

These workshops, part of a complex that includes offices and barracks. The site lies in a spectacular setting looking down onto Llyn Nantlle Lake and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. The offices were built in stages, firstly in 1863 when the quarry was bought by WA Darbishire and Company. They were substantially modernised to make the most of new water and steam technologies, and then again between 1899 and 1907.
The offices occupy a single storey T-block of coursed slate rubble construction. The earlier workshops are in two halves, one of which has slate roofing and the other a corrugated iron roof and elegant slate rubble buttressing. Both are metal-framed buildings hung or clad with slate slabs. A substantial amount of the workshops' original machinery and fittings have survived intact and include 'tuyere' hearths, woodworking equipment, storage racks, an overhead gantry crane and two railway lines with a small locomotive table.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/restoration/2006/wales_pen_yr_orsedd_01.shtml

I haven’t watched the whole series unfortunately but I have caught up with the last three of Restoration Village and I will attempt to see the final instalments. I have so far been most moved by the ‘working’ or ‘industrial’ buildings like this glorious project at Nantlle and I think this will probably remain my favourite, partly because I was really fascinated by the film clips of the splitting of the slates!
I’m not quite sure why these places my throat wobble, maybe it’s the feeling that these are the living, breathing histories of real and ordinary working people. The everyday lives of the unknown and average villagers seem so much more poignant and interesting than the trials and tribulations of the rich and infamous.