The fort around the church
A medieval church standing inside the walls of a late-Roman fort, three of its four sides still up.
03Story
A town built to be passed through
Holyhead, or Caergybi in Welsh, grew up around a Roman naval station and never stopped being a place you pass through. Each era left the marks of getting somewhere else.
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A Roman fort on the crossing
In the 3rd or 4th century the Romans built a small walled fort here, Caer Gybi, guarding the sea route and the approach to Ireland. Three of its walls still stand, up to four metres high.
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Cybi’s monastery, 6th century
By tradition St Cybi founded a monastery within the abandoned fort walls around 540. The church of St Cybi that stands there now carries his name, and much later stonework, largely 13th to 16th century.
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The packet port and Telford’s road
As the mail route to Dublin grew, Holyhead became a packet port. Thomas Telford’s London–Holyhead road ended at Salt Island, marked by a triumphal arch of 1821; Captain Skinner’s obelisk remembers a packet captain of the age.
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The Victorian works: rail and breakwater
The railway reached the town, and its station, rebuilt in 1866, keeps what is believed to be Wales’s longest train shed. The breakwater, begun in 1848 and finished in 1873, took 28 years and forty lives to build.
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A ferry town today
The car ferries to Dublin, run now by Stena Line and Irish Ferries, carry on the town’s one constant job. Beneath the coming and going, a working town gets on with its day.
Road, rail and sea all end at Holyhead. Everything you can see was built to reach somewhere else.
Atlas of Wales
