Bridge · Wales · Still standing

Menai Suspension Bridge

Pont y Borth

The Menai Suspension Bridge is a suspension bridge carrying the road across the Menai Strait between the island of Anglesey and mainland Wales. Designed by Thomas Telford and opened in 1826, it has massive Penmon limestone towers and long wrought-iron chain cables that support a narrow deck. It remains a prominent historic road crossing and a Grade I listed structure.

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Photograph via Wikimedia Commons

Its prime

1826

Today

Still standing

As it stood in 1826

What Menai Suspension Bridge looked like in its prime.

Long, low silhouette of a single 176 m suspension span held by two massive Penmon limestone towers and a series of stone arched approach piers. Eighty wrought-iron bars form the heavy chain cables draped over cast-iron saddles, with regularly spaced vertical suspenders reaching to a narrow wooden-plank roadway and simple iron railings. Stone towers are pale grey-beige with dressed ashlar faces; the deck is low above the tidal strait flanked by wooded banks and the small town of Porthaethwy (Menai Bridge).

Step inside

8 places to explore in 1826.

The record describes 8 distinct spots at Menai Suspension Bridge, including 2 interiors: inside a tower chain chamber, chain tunnel mouth in the rock. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more photos, more angles and more of the immersive experience.

Mainland approach (Bangor side)Anglesey approach (Porthaethwy/Menai Bridge town)On the deck, mid-spanTop of the northern towerInside a tower chain chamberChain tunnel mouth in the rockBeneath the stone-arched approach piersFrom a passing ship beneath the span

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