Wales: Slate quarries, abandoned chapels and a lighthouse in the sea

In Wales the abandoned places lie close together: slate quarries in the mountains of the north, chapels without a congregation, a Victorian hospital and, on the coast, a cast-iron lighthouse that has carried no regular light since 1921. In the autumn of 2022 I travelled through the country and saved the lighthouse for the last evening.

A small country with nothing to hide

With its good 20,000 square kilometres, this small country of the British Isles has no need to hide. It has magnificent stretches of coast, mountain landscapes and a long culture, and the Welsh national parks are rightly popular with walkers. The Welsh language is characteristic too. The Celtic country is warm-hearted and inviting, with an atmosphere in which you feel at home at once.

Slate

There are many castles, but what is most characteristic are the quarries scattered across the mountain regions. Many are abandoned today and were among my destinations. The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 28 July 2021.

Dorothea Quarry in the Nantlle Valley opened in 1829 and ceased working in 1970. The Anglesey Barracks at Dinorwic quarry are two rows of small cottages for workers who lived too far away to travel home each day, some of them on the island of Anglesey. They were inhabited until 1937.

What will become of the hospital at Denbigh?

The North Wales Hospital in Denbigh opened as an asylum in 1848; its main part closed in 1995. Since then there have been several fires. In 2018 the county council took over the site. Around 300 new homes are planned, and the listed main building is to be converted into 34 apartments. Work began with a turf-cutting ceremony in July 2026; demolition and remediation of the site are expected to take up to two years.

Chapels and a ship in the mud

Old churches and quite different forgotten places were among my destinations too, and Wales held some special and unmistakable ones.

In the mud of the River Neath in south Wales lies the lightship LV72. She was built in Sunderland in 1903 and lay off Juno Beach in Normandy from 18 June 1944 to 27 January 1945, marking the safe passage. In the early 1970s she was sold to Neath for scrap. She has lain there ever since.

The last evening at Whiteford Lighthouse

I saved my personal highlight for the last evening, to say a proper goodbye. It is probably one of the smaller structures in my book and yet one of the most precious places. Whiteford Sands in south Wales is a remote, lonely beach that can be reached only with effort and on foot. From the car park in the nearest village it is a good six kilometres each way through the wild coastal landscape to the old Whiteford Lighthouse, and it can be reached on foot only at low tide. The long distance holds a gift: you are alone with yourself, and hardly a soul strays so far out.

The tower was built of cast-iron plates in 1865 and replaced a wooden predecessor of 1854. The Welsh heritage record calls it the only large wave-swept cast-iron lighthouse surviving in the United Kingdom. It was in regular use until 1921. Today birds, not lamps, adorn its iron struts.

My plan worked out. As sunset approached I was able to visit the lighthouse at close quarters first, along a long path made of endless shells. I will never forget the sound of walking on them. Every metre of the long march was rewarded in the end by this scene and by the feeling of standing at a beautiful end of the world, in the middle of the sea.

After this pinch of peace and freedom, and a good Welsh beer, I spent some time collecting shells for my daughters until the tide came in, the lighthouse soon stood entirely in the water and the sun slowly set behind it. Blissful and content, I walked back through the dunes in the dusk and then in the dark. Hwyl fawr, Wales, I hope we meet again soon.

Wales is one of the twelve countries in my book VERGESSENE PRACHT, published by Frederking & Thaler in 2023.

The pictures

Photographs from Wales from the series RUINS AND REVERIE, FORGOTTEN VIEWS, EVERMORE and others.