Extracting the Slate

The point came that we got to sort all material out...underground, take the over-burden material off- that wasn't suitable for slate and then we get down to the area that was possibly slate- this would be a bed on average about eighteen inches to two feet in depth, and erm...so this took tremendous amount of effort to chisel up, it was very hard work- but you had to go round very carefully to chop it off in layers, and the expected layer thickness would be about four inches and this would be broken into sections- of ...rather like paving slabs- but not quite so square.

Tools for Extracting the Slate

At the same time we would get the material out- and possibly not clive it up- that's splitting- for possibly after three winters so there was a previous supply of slate got out- and then it would have possibly three winters to work on, because the more and more winters it had the easier that it would obviously be to split because the frost would keep working on it- that would be cliving...that tool was again an iron hammer- with a little blade either side and you would start in the middle of a section of stone...you start in the middle and you work round loosening the material very carefully-and work round the whole of the piece of material and then you go to the next section working outwards.

We had chisels we had large hammers down the mine and we had big bars- tremendous some of them, the big crowbar type things- we could hardly- one person could hardly lift because you'd have to leaver the material up out...and we'd have these little picks like...as long as a brush handle with a little pick at the end- a really sharp spike- those were the main tools you'd have...these old iron tools have been passed down the generations.

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