Читать книгу Scenes in North Wales - G. N. Wright - Страница 7

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This is the principal seaport in the Island of Anglesea, as well as the most important packet station for Irish communication on the western coast. The arrival of the steam packet is the chief incident of each day, and in auspicious weather a fourth part of the inhabitants are frequently assembled as spectators. The situation of the town is naturally exposed and bleak, but it has attained an appearance of respectability, cleanliness, and something of commerce, by the formation of an excellent asylum harbour, where vessels of any burden may take shelter, and by the completion of the Parliamentary road, which, commencing at Shrewsbury, passes through the Cambrian Alps, and terminates its useful object at the pier of Holyhead. The town and its local circumstances do not constitute an agreeable landscape, but there are still many objects of deep interest here, which deserve a separate and individual examination. From the summit of the mountain overhanging the town, a prospect extensive and gratifying may be enjoyed; the highest apex, just seven hundred feet above the sea, commands a view of the whole Snowdonian chain of mountains, apparently rising from the plains of Anglesea, at a distance of twenty miles; while to the west the Wicklow mountains are seen, upon a clear day, to hang over the green waters of the Irish sea. The ancient church is not without its attractions to the inquiring mind; it occupies the site of a monastery founded by Saint Cybi in the fourth century, and bore on its north wall this inscription, “Sancte Kybi ora pro nobis.” Part of the churchyard wall is of Roman architecture, and was pierced with small square apertures, a practice usual with that people in all mural enclosures. The probability of the Romans having advanced so far across the island, is increased by the discovery of coins and other reliques of that warlike nation in the vicinity of Holyhead. King George the Fourth sailed for Ireland from this port in the year 1821, an event commemorated in a spirited manner by the erection of a fine open colonnade thrown across the pier, near to the spot where his Majesty embarked.