Menai Suspension Bridge

Menai Bridge Welsh: Pont Grog y Borth
Anglesey, Caernarfonshire
The Menai Suspension Bridge from the A5
Location
Carrying:	A5 (London to Holyhead)
Crossing:	Menai Strait
Location
Grid reference:	SH556714
Location:	53°13’12"N, 4°9’48"W
Structure
Length:	1,368 feet Main span: 577 feet
Design:	Suspension bridge
Material:	Wrought Iron, Stone
History
Information

The Menai Suspension Bridge is a Victorian suspension bridge which carries road traffic between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Caernarfonshire.

The nearest settlement is the town of Menai Bridge.

The bridge was designed by Thomas Telford to enable travel from Holyhead to London, on a road which Telford had forged across North Wales, and thus create a route from Dublin. The bridge was completed in 1826. Today it is a Grade I listed building.

Construction

A plan & view of the chain bridge erecting over the menai at Bangor Ferry, 1820

Before the bridge was completed in 1826, Anglesey had no fixed connection to the mainland and all movements to and from Anglesey were by ferry across the fast flowing and dangerous waters of the Menai Strait. There were two main motivations for building the bridge: to ease travel from Ireland (part of the United Kingdom since 1801) and to aid Anglesey’s famers.

The main source of income on Anglesey was from the sale of cattle, and to move them to the markets of the mainland, including London, they had to be driven into the water and encouraged to swim across the Strait, a dangerous practice which often resulted in the loss of valuable livestock.

Holyhead was the closest point to, and thus one of the principal ports for ferries to Dublin, and so Thomas Telford the engineer was engaged to complete a survey of the route from London to Holyhead, and he proposed that a bridge should be built over the Menai Strait from a point near Bangor on the mainland to the village of Porthaethwy (which is now also known as Menai Bridge) on Anglesey.

Because of the high banks and fast flowing waters of the Strait, it would have been difficult to build piers on the shifting sands of the sea bed and, even if it could be done, they would have obstructed the navigation. Also, the bridge would have to be high enough to allow the passage of the tall ships of the day. In view of this, Telford proposed that a suspension bridge should be built and his recommendation was accepted by Parliament.

Construction of the bridge, to Telford's design, began in 1819 with the towers on either side of the strait. These were constructed from Penmon limestone and were hollow with internal cross-walls. Then came the sixteen huge chain cables, each made of 935 iron bars, that support the 577-foot span. To avoid rusting between manufacture and use, the iron was soaked in linseed oil and later painted. The chains each measured 1,713.6 feet (522.3 m) and weighed 121 tons. Their suspending power was calculated at 2,016 tons. The bridge was opened to much fanfare on 30 January 1826.

Later history

Menai Suspension Bridge being painted

The roadway was only 24 feet wide and, without stiffening trusses, soon proved highly unstable in the wind. The deck of the Menai Bridge was therefore strengthened in 1840 by W. A. Provis and, in 1893, the entire wooden surface was replaced with a steel deck designed by Sir Benjamin Baker. Over the years, the 4.5-ton weight limit proved problematic for the increasing freight industry and in 1938 the original wrought iron chains were replaced with steel ones without the need to close the bridge. In 1999 the bridge was closed for around a month to resurface the road and strengthen the structure, requiring all traffic to cross on the nearby Britannia Bridge.

On 28 February 2005 the bridge was promoted to UNESCO as a candidate World Heritage Site. On the same day one carriageway of the bridge was closed for six months restricting traffic to a single carriageway so that traffic travelled to the mainland in the morning and to Anglesey in the afternoon. The bridge was re-opened to traffic in both directions on 11 December 2005 after its first major re-painting in 65 years.

Surroundings

The Anglesey Coastal Path passes below the bridge. The bridge has a memorial to the Aberfan disaster victims on the Anglesey side.

Cultural references

The bridge pictured in a Staffordshire stoneware plate of the 1840s

Menai Suspension Bridge in the evening

A representation of the Menai Bridge inside a border of railings and stanchions is featured on the reverse of British one-pound coins minted in 2005.

In Lewis Carols’ ‘’Alice Through the Looking Glass’’, the White Knight tells Alice a poem named ‘’Haddocks' Eyes’’:

"I heard him then, for I had just
completed my design,
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine."

A well know Welsh englyn runs:

Uchelgaer uwch y weilgi - gyr y byd
Ei gerbydau drosti,
Chwithau, holl longau y lli,
Ewch o dan ei chadwyni.
—Dewi Wyn o Eifion”

(David Owen) (1784–1841)

- which means:

High fortress above the sea – the world drives
Its carriages across it;
And you, all you ships of the sea,
Pass beneath its chains.

See also

• Britannia Bridge, second bridge over the Menai Strait, opened in 1850

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Menai Suspension Bridge)

• Menai Bridge - Town Partnership
• Menai Heritage, celebrating the two bridges and the town of Menai Bridge