Gold rush! Clogau to reopen

THE Welsh mine that produced gold for three generations of royal wedding rings is to reopen after nearly 20 years.

The wedding bands of the Queen Mother, the Queen, Princess Margaret, the Princess Royal and Diana, Princess of Wales were made from the same nugget drawn from the Clogau St David’s mine at Bontddu in North Wales.

Mining ceased in 1998, as diminishing quantities of gold were being found. But Clogau has now been identified as having “expansion potential”, with the possibility that there are unworked veins to be discovered.

Alba Mineral Resources, which has taken a 49 per cent stake in Clogau’s owners, Gold Mines of Wales Limited, will reopen the mine later this year.

“The opportunity presented by this project is pretty unique – high-grade gold in the heart of the United Kingdom, and the fact that Welsh gold attracts a significant premium,” said George Frangeskides, the Alba executive chairman.

First Scotland, now Wales. At this rate, gold mines will soon be flourishing across Great Britain. After last year’s announcement that plans were in place to restart extraction of the precious metal at Cononish mine, in the village of Tyndrum, the same news now comes for the Clogau gold mine at Bontddu, near Dollgellau. Welsh gold, used for royal wedding rings, is more valuable because it is so rare. No one has seen any emerge from the hills for decades, so that it has almost become the stuff of myth. But it lives on, coursing in rich veins through the land that claims King Arthur. Which brave knights will venture into the hills to bring it back? And when they find it, will they also find a red dragon sitting atop the largest pile, puffs of smoke gently emerging from its nostrils as it slumbers?