WELSH SLATE
PENRHYN QUARRY
BETHESDA
BANGOR
GWYNEDD LL57 4YG
Tel: 01248 600656
Fax: enquiries@welshslate.com
Suppliers of: Roofing slates, slate cladding, slate paving, slate floor tiles, walling, sills and copings, decorative & construction aggregates, monoliths & feature stones, fire surrounds/hearths and worktops/counters.
Welsh Slate is the world’s leading supplier of high-quality slate and supplies the UK construction market with highly durable roofing slates, facade cladding, slate paving, walling, sills, copings, decorative and construction aggregates and hard landscaping products. For internal projects, Welsh Slate manufacture and supply slate tiles for flooring, fire surrounds, bespoke kitchen worktops and counters.
Environmentally Responsible
Welsh Slate’s Penrhyn quarry has been supplying roofing slate worldwide since the 13th Century and has a long tradition of being specified by architects, and our client base also includes leading developers and interior designers. As a result of our work we are committed to conducting our business in an environmentally responsible manner by minimising the environmental impact and promoting sustainable development within its operations and services. Welsh Slate operates an Environmental Management System EMS 539237 certified to ISO 14001
CPD Seminar
This seminar is designed to help architect and specifiers to understand the manufacturing process and the potential applications of Welsh Slate as a building material. It will explain the advantages and problems with slate and clarify the difference between differnent slates from around the world. The presentation will inform delegates of the variety of applications for Welsh Slate and provide information on the standards, accreditations, classifications and fixing methods.
CPD Factory Tour
The two hour tour will demonstrate the current slate quarrying and production processes while in addition giving you some hands on experience of working with a natural product. For enquiries or to arrange a CPD please telephone our sales office on the telephone number above or alternatively click here and fill out an enquiry form.
Our wide range of products include:
Roofing Slate
Welsh slate is proven to out last any other roofing material and is guaranteed to have a productive life in excess of 100 years. Available in three colour variants and three thickness grades and can be supplied up to 1.2 meters wide.
Welsh Slate roofing is produced in accordance with BS EN 12326
Hard Landscaping
Welsh Slate can be used for a wide variety of domestic or commercial garden and landscaping applications. Welsh Slate can provide colour, texture and unique practical qualities for any hard landscaping project.
Welsh Slate is easily maintained and hard wearing, making it perfect for paths, patios, walling, coping stone, monoliths, feature stones and other hard landscaping focal points. The unique chemical qualities of Welsh Slate means it will not alter the PH values of soils and it’s safe to use with pond life. Welsh Slate’s natural durability and resistance to weather, temperature, mossing, and colour erosion make it superbly adaptable and probably the most flexible material.
Exteriors
Welsh Slate is the perfect natural exterior construction product. It’s non-porous, exceptionally uniform, inert, non-combustible and probably the most adaptable material for the widest range of exterior applications including cladding, sills and steps & thresholds. Slate is totally unreactive to both acid and alkali, this chemical stability makes it compatible with all other building materials
Available in various colours and finishes, with naturally occurring veining and textures
Interiors
Welsh Slate is practical, easily maintained, and beautiful and is used in interiors for its natural beauty, hard-wearing properties and uniqueness and can add a smooth warm to touch finish or texture to flooring, cladding and worktops. Slate flooring works well with underfloor heating.
Construction Aggregates and Minerals
Construction slate aggregate is supplied for use in precast and ready-mixed concrete, road building and civil engineering. Slate granules are used to produce bituminous roofing felts and artificial slate roofing tiles. Testing information is available on request.
Further technical information, image galleries and product specifications are available through the Welsh Slate website or via the BPi Download Library.
Welsh Slate is Just the Medicine For a New Public Garden
Welsh Slate pavers and pathways star at Treborth Botanic Gardens’ new Welsh Herbal Garden.
A new public garden with Welsh Slate at its centrepiece is set to be officially opened this spring.
The new Welsh Herbal Garden forms a central part of the 45-acre Treborth Botanic Garden, which is owned by Bangor University and is one of only seven accredited botanical gardens in the country. It is located adjacent to a Conservation Area and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
The Welsh Slate centrepiece, installed by countryside management specialists Kehoe Countryside, comprises a 2.5m diameter circular mural of pavers of Welsh Slate’s Penrhyn Heather Blue riven slate – two rings around the circumference and “spokes” emanating to them from the centre.
Designed by Nicola Oakey, the ½-acre garden will be utilised by students of the university’s North Wales Medical School as a teaching resource to reflect modern as well as historical uses of plants as sources of medicines.
Taking inspiration from the Welsh landscape and using local materials, the design centres around two circular seating spaces connected by gently curving pathways. Raised drystone planters provide seating and the opportunity to get up close with the planting.
The rich and vibrant planting will tell the story of how people in Wales, including the 12th Century Physicians of Myddfai, used plants to treat all manner of ailments. Visitors will be able to discover the history of plants, including drinking a distilled water of red roses for toothache, bruised saffron as a sobering tonic, and using apples to remove warts.
The Welsh Slate centrepiece at Treborth, which was installed on a concrete pad with mortar, is complemented by Welsh Slate pitched slate pathways also installed, over six months, by Kehoe Countryside. The Welsh Slate pavers for the centrepiece were supplied by Cerrig Granite and Slate.
Kehoe contract manager Celyn Kehoe said: “Creating the new Welsh Herbal Garden at Treborth Botanic Garden showcased traditional skills including slate pitched pathways, slate mosaic art and stone walling as well as locally-made milled benches from sustainable timber.
“The centrepiece was very well made and easy to assemble, while the traditional pitching and walling was more time consuming but the slate looks great in place, and is a real asset to the garden. Treborth absolutely love it.”
Treborth Botanic Garden curator Natalie Chivers said: “We are delighted to have worked with Kehoe Countryside and Nicola on the slate mural for our Welsh Herbal Garden. The circular mural celebrates our botanic garden logo, encapsulated in a sun ray of individually carved and placed sections. Our logo is inspired by the traditional trinity Celtic knot and the abundance of fern species native to Wales and to the botanic garden, many of which have medicinal properties used by the Physicians of Myddfai in the 12th Century.”
Nicola Oakey said: “It was a fantastic opportunity to work with Treborth Botanic Garden to design the Welsh Herbal Garden which tells a story about plants that are deeply connected to Welsh history and heritage. That's why it was so important that we used local materials in the garden. The slate helps us to tell that story and creates a garden that feels absolutely 'right' in its setting."
She added: “The local landscaper, Kehoe Countryside, who Treborth recommended for the work, really drove the decisions of who to use as they know local suppliers so well. I think the material was always going to be slate, it's just a no-brainer.”
For more information about Treborth, go to https://treborth.bangor.ac.uk.
Welsh Slates Score Over a Century at a Private School
Howell’s School in Wales has a new roof thanks to Welsh Slate.
The complex reroof, with Welsh Slate, of a Grade II* listed school building, after at least a century, has won the contractors a place in the finals of specialist national awards.
Camilleri Roofing’s year-long work on Howell’s School, an independent day school in Cardiff for girls aged three to 18 and boys aged 16 to 18, involved more than 1,000m2 of Welsh Slate’s Penrhyn Heather Blue County-grade slates in 600mm x 300mm and 455mm x 250mm sizes.
These were complemented by bands of Vermont Unfading Green slates in 600mm x 300mm and 500mm x 250mm sizes. These were used as standard rectangles just below the ridge line and on the eaves, and as arrowheads creating the illusion of hexagons, around dormer windows and chimneys.
Camilleri’s work on phase 1 of the external fabric repair project, on the school’s main entrance building and a clock tower, has won the Welsh company a shortlisting in the roof slating category of the 2025 UK Roofing Awards organised by the NFRC.
Although the school was built in 1858, a substantial part of it was damaged by a major fire in 1920, so it is likely the Welsh Slates had been on the roof since then, 105 years ago. The Unfading Green ones from New England Slate quarries are produced from slate beds laid down in the same Cambrian era as Welsh Slate’s Penrhyn slate, so match their otherwise unrivalled quality.
Specified on a like-for-like basis by 310studio architects for specialist school refurbishment contractor Eden London, they were installed throughout the school year, with the Girls Day School Trust building live and functioning fully for most of the contract period.
The multi-faceted roof build up included a vapour control layer, insulation, counter battens, traditional felt, battens and slating, in addition to complex supplementary detailing such as clay slotted roll-top ridge tiles with fleur-de-lys inserts (the ridge tiles mortar bedded and mechanically fixed, along with a continuous ventilated ridge system), renewal of all lead flashings, cappings and detailing and bat mitigation/access measures.
Camilleri senior quantity surveyor Simon Bailey said: “In addition to the complex roof build up and the logistics of operating over a live school, we also had the further complication of feature bands in the existing slate roof, which were to be replicated. These feature bands used two different types of slate (Penrhyn Heather Blue and Vermont green) in patterns of standard rectangular courses and arrowhead courses.
“A very careful survey of the existing slates was therefore undertaken, to create an accurate record of the existing roof and ensure that the historic pattern was retained. However, due to issues with the original roof design, the ornamental courses of the existing roof did not line through on adjacent elevations. The architect required us to retain the existing pattern but achieve continuous lines around the roof, which was successfully achieved. We also had the added complication of the same slate arrangement on a tower roof but in a smaller slate size.”
He added: “Workmanship is an absolute key factor in any roofing project, but a 165-year-old (live) private school with a specification as complex as this, under the close scrutiny of Cadw, made attention to detail so much more important. The historic nature and importance of the property demanded a suitably experienced and qualified site team, to ensure the absolute best possible result. Our team therefore consisted of the foreman responsible for our last NFRC award-winning slate project, leading a four-man team with over 62 years of experience between them.”
Three young Camilleri operatives who were undertaking their Roof Slating and Tiling NVQ Level 2 qualifications at the time, also worked on the project at various stages.
“The project provided a perfect opportunity for each to display their natural slating abilities, with all three able to work with such a high-quality slate,” said Simon.
“Work of the utmost quality was required from the outset and the battening was a very careful process, due to the requirement for the ornamental slate bands to line through on adjacent elevations.”
310 Studio Architects said: “The roof, made of beautiful Heather Blue Welsh slate with horizontal banding in green, serves as the building’s first line of defense against the unforgiving Welsh weather! Through testing and liaison with slate experts, it was determined that the existing slates were in excess of their usable life and would be replaced. The opportunity to introduce an ultrafine layer of high performance insulation, the same insulation that has been used by Nasa on its rockets, was taken to improve the thermal performance of the roof without negatively impacting the external appearance or raising the ridge line of the roof. This ensured that the restoration was entirely in keeping with its historic appearance whilst reducing the carbon emissions of the school overall.”
A quantity of sound slates removed from the original roof was set aside for the school to service any future repairs of remaining original roofs and to use in the students’ Victorian term project. All other usable salvaged slates were transferred to salvage merchants, with the proceeds used to help offset the cost of the project.
The awards finals take place on 9th May.
