Explore Victorian technology within a luscious country park
These Victorian workshops hold industrial gems, such as the steam engine made by the Caernarfon-based engineers De Winton – and still in operation after the famous steeplejack and steam-power enthusiast Fred Dibnah helped to restore it! The engine was originally used to power a stone saw table used for cutting stone and slate in the workshops.
The workshops are arranged around courtyards and date to the 1850s. They served the Glynllifon Estate, with its post-Regency period Plas Glynllifon mansion, built in 1846. The estate all belonged to the Wynn family (who held the Lord Newborough title) and included a stone saw table, smithy, timber mill and tannery. Set within the Grade I-listed parkland on the edge of the Snowdonia mountains, the estate is also a site of Special Scientific Interest, containing rare plants and wildlife.
Interestingly, you can still make out the site of the estate’s very own gas works from the distinctive marks of the gas-holders in the estate workshops courtyard. It produced coal-gas to power Glynllifon’s gas lamps from 1856.