* Clogau (Bangor)

In 1989 a local man named William Roberts made a very unexpected and exciting discovery – an abandoned gold mine in the mountains of Snowdonia.

This was the Clogau St David’s mine in Bontddu. Despite its disused state, he planned to transform it into a tourist attraction where visitors could pan for gold.

However, the idea was opposed due to its location within the Snowdonia National Park, so instead, he decided to gamble on the idea that there would be some undiscovered gold still buried within the mine.To make best use of this precious gold, William used it exclusively to create jewellery of the very highest quality, beauty and originality, with Wales as his main design inspiration. But it wasn’t until 1992 that the first range of jewellery emerged, which consisted of just five pieces that were sold through a handful of small gift shops near the Clogau St David’s gold mine.

Luckily by this time William had already amassed a significant amount of high-quality gold, and it is from this stockpile that most of the Welsh gold that we use in our jewellery today comes from.