County in Wales
Anglesey
Anglesey is home to a village with a 58-letter name, a Roman massacre site and the Welsh island that fed an entire nation. It is also where a prince once rescued people from the sea.
Key information
- County
- Anglesey (Ynys Môn)
- Nation
- Wales
- Population
- About 69,000 (2021 Census)
- Area
- About 714 square km, the largest island in Wales and in the Irish Sea
- Known for
- Llanfair PG, Beaumaris Castle, Holyhead ferries, Llanddwyn Island, Menai Strait mussels, Halen Môn sea salt
- What locals are called
- Monwysion (from Môn, the island's Welsh name)
- Famous people
- Kyffin Williams, Goronwy Owen, Thomas Williams, Henry Paget
- Football clubs
- Holyhead Hotspur, Llangefni Town, Amlwch Town
About Anglesey
The village that bought itself a longer name
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is 58 letters long. It is often said that the name was stretched in the 1860s to draw travellers to the railway station there. It is usually translated as "St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near the rapid whirlpool and St Tysilio's church by the red cave". Locals call the place Llanfair PG, and the station sign has been photographed by more visitors than almost anything else on the island. It is a fair introduction to Anglesey, a place that takes its own history seriously and still enjoys a joke about it.
Mam Cymru: the island that fed Wales
The Welsh call Anglesey Môn Mam Cymru, "Môn, Mother of Wales". The island's flat, fertile farmland once supplied grain to the mountainous mainland, and its fields held up when the hills could not. The Romans knew it as Mona and treated it as a stronghold of the Druids. Around AD 60 or 61 the governor Suetonius Paulinus crossed the Menai Strait and attacked the island's religious leaders. Later, the princes of Gwynedd kept a court at Aberffraw, on the south-west coast. Edward I ended that independence after conquering Wales in the 1280s. His answer on Anglesey was Beaumaris Castle, begun in 1295 and designed by James of St George. It is a near-perfect concentric fortress, with walls inside walls and a moat. It was never finished, and it is now part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The copper mountain and the bridges
In the late 1700s Parys Mountain, near Amlwch, was one of the biggest copper mines in the world. The businessman Thomas Williams, nicknamed the Copper King, controlled so much of the trade that he could influence prices across Britain. Today the mountain's rust-red, purple and yellow scarred landscape looks like another planet. Getting to Anglesey used to mean a ferry or a risky crossing. Thomas Telford's Menai Suspension Bridge opened in 1826, and at 176 metres its main span was the longest of any suspension bridge in the world. Robert Stephenson's Britannia Bridge followed in 1850 and carried the railway. A fire in 1970 wrecked it, and it was rebuilt with a road deck on top. Telford's bridge was part of a bigger plan. The route to Holyhead was meant to speed up travel to Dublin, and Holyhead is still one of Britain's major ferry ports for Ireland. The breakwater there took from 1847 to 1873 to build and is about 1.7 miles (2.7 km) long, one of the longest in Britain.
Saints, sea salt and a very Welsh love story
Llanddwyn Island, reached on foot at low tide from Newborough, is where Saint Dwynwen is said to have lived. She is the Welsh patron saint of lovers, and her day, 25 January, is the Welsh answer to Valentine's Day. Her ruined church sits among pale rocks, a little lighthouse and dunes with views of Snowdonia. The island's food starts with the sea. Menai Strait mussels are famous, lobster and crab come from the surrounding waters, and Halen Môn, a flaky sea salt, is now sold around the world. Traditional dishes include Wyau Ynys Môn, Anglesey eggs, which are layered eggs with leeks, potatoes and cheese. The island's stone age past is easy to find too. Bryn Celli Ddu is a passage tomb that lets in the light of the summer solstice sunrise, and Barclodiad y Gawres is another ancient chamber with carved patterns on its stones.
Famous Monwysion, and one famous visitor
Kyffin Williams, born in Llangefni in 1918, painted the island's brooding hills and coast in thick, dark oils. He is among Wales's best-loved artists. Goronwy Owen, an eighteenth-century poet born near Moelfre, was one of the great Welsh poets of his time. Henry Paget, the first Marquess of Anglesey, lost a leg at Waterloo, and an artificial limb known as the Anglesey Leg was made for him. His home, Plas Newydd, still stands beside the Strait, and a tall column commemorating him rises above the island. In recent years the island's best-known resident was Prince William, who lived here from 2010 to 2013 while working as a search-and-rescue pilot at RAF Valley. Football on the island is local and loyal, with clubs such as Holyhead Hotspur, Llangefni Town and Amlwch Town. The sailing in the Menai Strait is among the best in Britain.