Qualla: Holyhead

Holyhead: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

St Cybi was a sixth-century Welsh saint whose name now anchors a town of 12,084 people. The Welsh call it Caergybi - Cybi's Fort - because the medieval church he founded was built inside the walls of an existing Roman fort, an unusual three-walled enclosure with the fourth side opening directly onto a sea that has since retreated. The English have called it Holyhead since at least the fourteenth century, a name that signals the density of sacred sites at this far western edge of the island. Roman fort, medieval saint, Iron Age hillfort on the mountain behind, prehistoric standing stones in every direction - the whole point of Holyhead, before it became the point at which Britain catches the boat to Dublin, was its strangeness as a place where many overlapping holinesses had accumulated on a small bit of land.

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Holyhead: The Roman Fort with a Church Inside

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

St Cybi's Church is built inside one of the few three-walled Roman forts in Europe. The Romans did not need a fourth wall: the sea came right up to that side, doing the job of fortification for them. The sea has since pulled back, leaving the fort high and dry, but the missing wa...

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Holyhead: The Mail to Dublin, and Telford's Road

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The 1800 Acts of Union, which merged the Irish and British parliaments, made the London-Dublin route a national priority. By 1814, passenger traffic between Holyhead and Dublin had reached around 14,000 a year. The South Stack Lighthouse was lit in 1809. Thomas Telford built the ...

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Holyhead: Aluminium, Ferries, and Brexit

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

From 1971 to September 2009, Holyhead's main industry was the Anglesey Aluminium smelter on the edge of town. Ships arrived from Jamaica and Australia carrying alumina, which travelled to the plant on a rope-driven conveyor belt running under the town from a dedicated jetty. The ...

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Holyhead: Who Comes from Here

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Dawn French, half of the French and Saunders comedy partnership and star of The Vicar of Dibley, was born in Holyhead in 1957. The Welsh poet and Anglican priest R. S. Thomas grew up in the town. Glenys Kinnock, the politician and MEP, was educated at Holyhead High School - which...

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Holyhead: The Strange Day of Two Tornadoes

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 23 November 1981, Holyhead was struck by two tornadoes during the largest tornado outbreak ever recorded in the United Kingdom. One hundred and four tornadoes touched down across the country that day, and the strongest of all of them - rated F2 on the Fujita scale - hit Holyhe...

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