A Harbour Built for Slate
Porthmadog’s harbour is the reason the town exists. In the early 19th century William Alexander Madocks dammed the Glaslyn estuary with the extraordinary Cob embankment, reclaiming thousands of acres of tidal land. The harbour at the eastern end of the Cob became the export point for the millions of tons of slate quarried at Blaenau Ffestiniog, carried down the mountain on the Ffestiniog Railway. At its peak in the 1870s, over 1,000 vessels a year loaded slate at Porthmadog and carried it to cities across Britain, America and Australia.
The harbour declined with the slate trade in the early 20th century and the quays fell silent. Today the harbour is home to leisure craft, a few working fishing boats and the vessels of the Porthmadog Maritime Museum.
The Maritime Museum
The Porthmadog Maritime Museum, in the old slate shed at the Greaves Wharf, preserves the story of the port through artefacts, photographs and models. The museum’s centrepiece is the Garlandstone, a restored wooden ketch that traded slate from these quays. The museum is open in summer; check ahead for current opening times.
The Cob
The Cob embankment, nearly a mile long and still carrying both the A487 road and the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland railways, is one of the great engineering achievements of the early 19th century. Walking or cycling the Cob gives some of the finest mountain views in Wales — the Moelwyns, Cnicht (the Welsh Matterhorn) and on clear days the distant peaks of Snowdonia reflected in the tidal water of the Glaslyn estuary.
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