The Menai Bridge area has always been very important as a crossing place for the Menai Strait - there's been a ferry crossing here since prehistoric times.

The very old name for the area is Porthddaethwy - 'porth' meaning ferry and 'daethwy' being a tribe - so crossing place of the Ddaethwy tribe. It got pushed together to be 'Porthaethwy' in later times.

One mistake people often make is to refer to a medieval Menai Bridge - but it didn't exist under that name then because there wasn't a bridge!

Looking at the census records from the 19th century, they didn't call the place Menai Bridge until the middle of the 19th century. Even when the bridge was built and the town was growing, they called it 'The Ferry', or 'Bangor Ferry' even though the ferry had gone.

In medieval times the main settlement was up on the rising ground. The whole area of what is now the town was nothing but a rocky common. There were lots of great crags - in fact in Welsh it was called 'Cerrig y Borth' (rocks of the port).

It was a very big area of common land, with craggy rocks, marshy areas and stagnant pools.

The only building of note on the common started life as the ferry house. It was later known as the Cambria and is now a private house on Cambrian Road. I think the date on the plaque is slightly wrong - there had to be a petition to build a house on the common and it was passed right at the end of 1687, and so it was probably built in 1688.

Some of the farms from the township up on the high ground are still there, though Tŷ Mawr and Tyddyn Mostyn have been demolished to make room for housing.

But just beyond the cricket field is a big house called Tyn y Caeau which belonged to a farming gentry family. Further over beyond Four Crosses there's another big farm called Rallt.

Then at the beginning of the 19th century a large house was built over in the Cadnant Valley, on the other side of Menai Bridge, called Plas Cadnant, which was home to self-made gentry folk.

The beginning of the 19th century brought huge changes to the area - the most obvious being the building of the bridge. The foundation stone was laid in 1819, but it wasn't actually opened until 13 January 1826. It was a huge change for the area - it was such a huge structure and the local people must have marvelled at it.

At the same time, an act was passed in parliament in 1815 for the enclosure of the Porthaethwy common and the town as we know it today began to grow.
Ann Benwell