The ferries into Anglesey, five in all, from end to end of the Straits, were all more or less perilous. Crossing by them, according to evidence produced at an enquiry on the subject, 180 persons lost their lives between 1664 and 1842. The mail route was by Bangor Ferry, called by the Welsh Porthaethwy, or the “Ferry of the Narrow Waters,” close by where Telford’s suspension bridge now spans the channel. Up out of Bangor drove the Mails, and many of the stage-coaches, post-chaises, and chariots, to the ferry-house. Thence passengers and their luggage were ferried across to the opposite side in boats and lighters, each manned by four ferrymen. Coaches and chaises were in waiting when they landed, to whisk them off to Mona and Holyhead. Swift crossed here in 1727, and refers to the inn, “which, if it be well kept, will break Bangor.” There he lay the night, and was up at four o’clock the next morning. This inn was the “George,” still standing, with an addition built on, in what was intended to be a grand and imposing style, about 1850. The huge, buff-coloured pile, standing in midst of lovely gardens, faces the Strait. There still hangs on the wall of the coffee-room an autograph of the Duke of Wellington, taken from the visitors-book and proudly framed: “I passed the night of the 21st August, 1851, at the George Inn, and was very well accommodated. Wellington.”

In the terraced gardens is preserved the ferrymen’s horn, but the ferrymen are dead and gone, and even their huts, built on the rocks of the Anglesey shore, are in ruins. There stands on that rocky landing-place an old inn, now called the “Cambria,” but in the days of the ferry known as the “Three Tuns.” It is a romantic spot, romantic with all the pathos of a tale that is told. From the wrought-iron bracket of the inn, long without a sign, to the deserted and roofless huts and the slippery, sea-weedy rocks, everything tells of a vanished order of things. A few ancients gossip of what their fathers and grandfathers told them of the times when exhausted passengers climbed from the slimy rocks at the water’s edge to the shelter of the inn, and of the old custom of swimming the cattle across the Straits at low water, from the island of Ynys-y-Moch that now supports one of the bridge-towers; but even the bridge is now become something of an antiquity, and the ferry well-nigh forgot. A well-authenticated story of it is still remembered. It tells how an attorney, on the ground of having booked through to London, refused to pay the penny demanded by the ferrymen for taking his portmanteau across, and how it was accordingly detained until the Mail had left. The lawyer then paid the disputed penny and ordered out a chaise and four to London. Arrived there, he brought an action against the proprietors of the Mail, and recovered all his expenses and compensation for loss of time. The Judge expressed his opinion that the plaintiff was a benefactor to his country, a view not likely to be taken in these times of one who would spend £50 and perhaps five times that amount in litigation rather than pay a penny.

The ferry was not superseded without some little contention. It had been the property, time out of mind, of the Williams family, of Plas Issa, Conway. Leased to an ancestral John Williams by Queen Elizabeth, for £3 6s. 8d. a year, there is no knowing how far back beyond that time the family interest had reached. Government offered a sum in compensation when the bridge was building, but the amount was not considered sufficient, and the question was referred to the Beaumaris Assizes, where the average takings of the last twelve years were stated to have been £885 18s. per annum. In the result, Miss Williams, the representative of the family, was awarded £26,557, representing thirty years’ purchase, and she, or rather her husband, for she married in the meanwhile, was paid that sum on the day the Bridge was opened.

Telford was not the first who had proposed to bridge the Menai. Forty-two years before he had prepared his plans a Mr. Golborne sketched a design, and Rennie had at a later period proposed a cast-iron bridge to span the water in one arch. Even Telford’s first proposals differed wholly from the design he eventually adopted; and he, like Rennie, favoured more than any other type of bridge the single cast-iron arch. Difficulties in the way of construction, in some degree, but in greater measure the objections of the seafaring interest engaged in navigating the Straits, led to this type being abandoned and the suspension principle adopted. A legend, much in favour at Llangollen, tells how the engineer, at a loss for ideas, obtained the suggestion for his Menai Bridge from a small bridge on the suspension principle that then crossed the Dee at Berwyn. However that may be, suspension bridges of practical use, if of no very great size or scientific construction, were already known to the world. Telford produced his design in 1818, and it was submitted to the Commissioners and authorised by Parliament in the following year. The design, carried out exactly as proposed, was to provide a level roadway across the Straits at a height of 100 feet above high water, with a clear opening between the main suspension towers of 579 feet, thus providing an ample fairway for mariners, and silencing the objections of the shipping interest. The spot chosen was at a narrowing of the channel, where the rocky shores, rising on either side abruptly to a considerable height, afforded this clearance, and where an island called Ynys-y-Moch gave a ready site for one of the great towers. Between these main supports of the chains and the shores, a series of arches—four on the Anglesey side and three on the Carnarvonshire approach—were to support the rest of the roadway, to be 52 feet wide, divided into two carriage ways of 12 feet each, with a central footpath between of 4 feet width. The total height of the two great towers, above high water mark, was to be 153 feet, and the entire length of the bridge 1000 feet.

The first stone of this great work was laid on the 10th of August, 1819, when the tower on Ynys-y-Moch, on the Anglesey side, was begun. In the course of four years the whole of the masonry work was completed, and the series of piers and arches, built of Anglesey limestone, ready to receive the iron chains, weighing close upon 2,200 tons. The first of these was hauled up to its place on the 26th of April, 1825, in the presence of thousands of spectators, come, many of them, in expectation of seeing a colossal failure. When the hauling was completed, and the first of the sixteen great chains that carry the central span safely bolted in position, the friends who rushed to congratulate the anxious engineer found him on his knees, in prayer.

The last chain was in position by the 9th of July, the driving home of the final bolt, followed by the playing of “God Save the King” by a brass band placed in the centre of the bridge, and a triumphal march across it of workmen, amid volleys of cheers from those assembled thousands who seem to have been constantly on the spot for more than two months, and were still there on the following 30th of January, when “this stupendous, pre-eminent, and singularly unique structure,” as an old writer calls it, was opened “at thirty-five minutes after one o’clock a.m., to allow the Royal London and Holyhead Mail coach, conveying the London mail-bags for Dublin, to pass; David Davies, coachman, Wm. Read, guard.” The Mail was followed by the Bangor Pilot, and the London, Oxford and Holyhead “Oxonian”; the Holyhead Road Commissioners, the engineer, and several thousands of persons.

The total cost of the bridge and approaches was £120,000; a very moderate sum in comparison with many other bridge-building works, and something less than one-fifth the cost of its huge neighbour, the Britannia railway bridge, two miles distant, down the Straits. Four workmen were killed during its progress.

Tolls are still taken at the Bridge. Foot-passengers and cyclists are alike charged a penny each, and flys and cabs a shilling; the charges running up curiously to half-a-crown for a stage coach, and three shillings for a “post-chaise, coach, landau, berlin, or barouche, or other vehicle with four wheels and four horses.” These charges are arranged so as not to press too heavily upon the inhabitants of either side, and one payment frees the bridge for the rest of the day, the payer of one toll being allowed to come and go as often as he pleases up to twelve o’clock, midnight.

As a business speculation, if it had been built solely to that end, the Menai Bridge would be pronounced a failure, for the interest on capital originally expended comes, at five per cent., to £6,000 per annum, and the annual income from tolls, returned in 1837 as £1,200, when the coaches were still running, must now be less rather than more. In addition to the original cost, the charge for upkeep must be taken into consideration, although, as the ironwork has not been painted for many years past, that, perhaps, does not bulk very largely.

Proposals made by the County Councils of Carnarvon and Anglesey to purchase the bridge from the Government and to open it toll free have failed, the price asked being beyond the resources of those bodies.