Britannia Bridge

About

Britannia Bridge (Welsh: Pont Britannia) is a bridge in Wales that crosses the Menai Strait between the Isle of Anglesey and the city of Bangor. It was originally designed and built by the noted railway engineer Robert Stephenson as a tubular bridge of wrought iron rectangular box-section spans for carrying rail traffic. Its importance was to form a critical link of the Chester and Holyhead Railway's route, enabling trains to directly travel between London and the port of Holyhead, thus facilitating a sea link to Dublin, Ireland.

Two decades before the building of the Britannia Bridge, the Menai Suspension Bridge had been completed, but this structure carried a road rather than track; there was no rail connection to Anglesey before the construction of the Britannia Bridge. After many years of deliberation and proposals, on 30 June 1845, a Parliamentary Bill covering the construction of the Britannia Bridge received royal assent. At the Admiralty's insistence, the bridge elements were required to be relatively high in order to permit the passage of a fully rigged man-of-war.

In order to meet the diverse requirements, Stephenson, the project's chief engineer, performed in-depth studies...