All That Glitters: Ashley Prospects for Welsh Gold

Ashley gears up for her gold mine tour. Betsa Marsh photo

Ashley the Traveling Teddy became a deep thinker on a recent tour of Wales–very deep, down 70 steps into a dark  shaft once worked by Romans 2,000 years ago.

Ashley travels for the third-grade class of Meredith Schroeder at St. Joseph Consolidated School in Hamilton, Ohio. The Traveling Teddy program is a geography outreach of the Society of American Travel Writers.

The Romans, who built a fort nearby at Pumsaint,  searched for gold at Dolaucothi using a drift mine into the hillside rather than a vertical shaft. They used fire and water to crack the quartz, and little children ages 10 to 14 would then sort out the quartz, looking for gold. It took a ton of quartz, according to Ray Miller of the National Trust, to yield an ounce of gold about the size of a peanut.

Archaeologists have found fragments of the Romans’ water wheels

Ray Miler of the National Trust teaches Ashley the ropes. Betsa Marsh photo

on the mining site. They’re now on display in the Cardiff Museum.

After the Romans, small-scale mining resumed in 1853 and grew until 1912, when, according to the BBC, the complex geology of the site brought an end to work there. Miners returned to Dolaucothi one last time between 1933 and 1938, after which the equipment was sold off.

Today, the National Trust has reconstructed the mineyard to the 1930s period. There’s a gold exhibit, a shop with rare Welsh gold and a tea room.

You can, of course, pan for gold there–Ashley tried her paws, but didn’t find enough to quit her day job as traveling ambassador for the students of St. Joseph.

Ray Miller of the National Trust welcomes Ashley and other travelers to the Long Adit, the Roman opening to Dolaucothi Gold Mine in Wales. Betsa Marsh photo