12 PORTS: HOLYHEAD – GATEWAY TO IRELAND

The town of Holyhead can seem to be the end of the road, and in one sense indeed it is. On Salt Island is a Marble Arch, which marks the end of the A5, which starts 260 miles away at an identical Marble Arch in London. Holyhead is also the terminus for the railway line from London to Chester and across North Wales.

Located on Holy Island on Anglesey, at the western tip of North Wales, historically the port of Holyhead has been an important staging post and mail route to Ireland. Nowadays it is a vital link on the European road haulage network, with transcontinental lorries and holidaymakers on their way across the Irish Sea. They embark efficiently from road or rail without needing to visit the town itself, which can seem somewhat down-at-heel, especially if you go there on a Sunday and find hardly anything is open.

In recent years this busy port has also become a stop for cruise ships, though it can be expected that the bulk of the cruise visitors see very little of Holyhead, as they take excursions to more glamorous destinations such as Snowdonia or one of the several castles for which Wales is famed.

However, despite often being overlooked, Holyhead offers a vast number of places of interest for people with an open mind, and particularly for maritime history enthusiasts. The Maritime Museum on Newry Beach (a name which echoes links with the Emerald Isle), housed in a former lifeboat house, is an obvious place to start on exploring the town's maritime history, and the town's marina is nearby.

The port's role in trade with Ireland may in fact go as far back as 2,000 BC, when stone axes from Ireland were the main import. The area surrounding the town certainly has many megalithic sites, showing the area's importance in that era.

In Roman times the locality's strategic position was utilised by the Romans, with a watchtower on Holyhead Mountain to keep surveillance for Irish pirates. In the town itself, overlooking the harbour, is a fortification which served as a Roman coastguard station. In the sixth century Prince Caswallon, Prince of North Wales, gave this fortification to Saint Cybi, the town's patron, who built his church within the walls.

Holyhead's strategic position meant that in the Middle Ages it sometimes played a role as an embarkation point for invasions of Ireland. In July 1332 orders were given for ships from Gloucestershire, Devon, Cornwall, North and South Wales to assemble at Holyhead and Tenby for a projected invasion to be led by Edward III, but due to the threat from Scotland this came to nothing.

In Tudor times Royal dispatches from London passed through Holyhead on the way to the officials in Dublin, and initially this service was restricted to official communications, but later on, private correspondence was also carried.

In the days before reliable steam ferries, sailings relied on favourable weather, and passengers were sometimes forced to spend days in lodgings in the town. One of these unwilling guests in 1727 was Dean Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travellers, who dined on good mutton, but the worst ale in the world, and complained that none of the local farmers and shopkeepers spoke English. In 1748 John Wesley was similarly forced to tarry in Holyhead, because the ships were all on the other side of the Irish Sea, but at least he put this time to good use by preaching the gospel.

After the Act of Union with Ireland in 1801, Irish MPs started travelling to Westminster, which led to the need to improve the road connecting London to Holyhead and Ireland, and subsequently to the building of the famed Menai Suspension Bridge, an object of beauty and a marvel of engineering, and later the construction of the railway line and the Britannia Bridge, also relating to connecting Dublin to the Capital.

From Newry Beach you can see a breakwater, which is just under two miles long, snaking away into the distance. The work on this vast project started in 1848, and finished in 1873, with a lighthouse at the end. It had become clear that a harbour of refuge was needed to shelter ships from south-westerly gales (in 1826 it had been reported that over 150 ships sought shelter at Holyhead). Brunel's Great Eastern, then the biggest ship in the world, sheltered behind the unfinished breakwater in October 25-26, 1859, the night of the storm which was to be famous for the sinking of the Royal Charter, at the opposite end of Anglesey.

Seven million tonnes of stone were quarried from Holyhead Mountain for building this breakwater, extracted from a quarry at the other end of Newry Beach and transported on temporary railway lines. This is now a quiet beauty spot, with a lake, rocky coast, walks and some relics of the industrial past. Reclaimed by nature, in 1990 it was opened as the Holyhead Breakwater Quarry Park.

The work involved in building the breakwater resulted in an influx of people taking advantage of the labour opportunities presented. This resulted in a phenomenal increase in population, from 3,809 in 1841, to 8,863 in 1851, with a swarm of navvies and workmen, and also better-off classes such as civil engineers, naval commanders and ships officers, and an influx of English and Irish into the town.

The town's dependence on trade with Ireland is a strong point when relations with the neighbouring island are good, but this was emphatically not the case in the 1930s, with a trade war between the UK and the Irish Free State. Unemployment was high in Holyhead at the time, though the town's wartime role as a naval base for the Dutch navy helped to alleviate this.

Ferries to Ireland still keep the port buzzing with people and activity, but they’re not the only vessels bound for Ireland. Today there are more than 500 calls per year from bulk carriers, cruise ships, coasters and large fishing vessels, plus numerous smaller fishing vessels and leisure craft.

Over the years, the port has enabled diverse industries to thrive. You may be able to see a very tall chimney to the east of the town. This chimney, visible on a clear day from almost the centre of Anglesey, is a reminder of what was once the town's major employer.

Anglesey Aluminium, a joint venture of Rio Tinto Zinc and Kaiser Aluminium, started producing in 1971. Several factors made Holyhead an ideal location: being a port made it accessible for raw materials, while the road and railway links would help in transporting the finished material. It also had access to the vital resources of electricity from the Wylfa nuclear power station, water from the Llyn Alaw reservoir, and labour from the town. Sadly the contract for power from Wylfa terminated in 2009, and no new contract was negotiated, so the main aluminium plant closed. Much of the site is now occupied the Penrhos Retail Park, which does create substantial employment for the area, but diverts passing traffic from the town centre.

As heavy industry has declined, Holyhead has looked for renewal. Tourism could be boosted by an Eco Park including business units and a holiday village on former industrial land. Ambitious plans for biomass power generation have had hopes raised. Plastics reprocessing gives a boost to Holyhead’s green credentials. Novel forms of tidal power generation are being trialled offshore. The Port is planning for all Brexit scenarios. The marina, destroyed by a freak storm in 2018, plans to rebuild.

Holyhead may be at the end of the road, and its resilience has been tested, but it’s not the end of the road for Holyhead.