During the Industrial Revolution, Parys Mountain became the world's most important source of copper and Northern Anglesey enjoyed a thirty year boom. The copper-rich ore was carted down the mountain to be partially smelted in the furnaces of Porth Amlwch. The enriched ore was shipped from the little harbour to the growing industrial regions of the lower Swansea valley and the English northwest. This encouraged the development at Amlwch of a small shipbuilding and ship repair industry.
The market for Anglesey copper finally collapsed in the middle of the nineteenth century: the quality and quantity of the extracted ore had declined and the price of copper was being undercut by competition from abroad. Parys Mountain still contains minerals – not only copper but zinc, silver and lead too.
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Magma’s new compilation – published by the Amlwch Industrial Heritage Trust – is available now through AMAZON: Copper Kingdom: Parys Mountain and Amlwch's Port
This guide, by Philip Steele & Robert Williams, is also available in a Welsh-language edition.














The Copper King

—Thomas Williams of Llanidan, by J.R. Harris
Reduced to £15 (post free within UK)
This book is the second edition (2003) of Professor Harris’s biography.
Hardcover, illustrated, 208 pages, 173mm wide x 245mm high.

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Thomas Williams (1737-1802) of Anglesey, born in Llansadwrn and with an estate at Llanidan, was a lawyer who became a prominent figure of the Industrial Revolution and a millionaire … Britain's 'Copper King'.
He led the reopening of copper workings on Parys Mountain and made Anglesey, briefly, the leading producer in the world. By the end of the eighteenth century Thomas Williams controlled half of all copper production in the British Isles and his open-cast mines were employing about 1,500 men, women and children. Unusually for a successful capitalist in that age, Williams was reckoned to be a straight dealer and fair employer, and was known locally as Twm Chwarae Teg ('Tom Fair Play').

Copper Mountain

—by John Rowlands. Paperback, 200 pages, 2002
£6 (plus £1.25 postage within UK)
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The classic study, first published in 1966, of Anglesey’s copper industry during the eighteenth century.