Bangor, Gwynedd

• 1. Introduction

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  Bangor, the cathedral city on the northern coast of Wales, carries a word in its name that most people walk past without a second thought. In old Welsh, 'bangor' means a wattled enclosure, the kind of fence made from woven branches that once surrounded a small monastic site near the Menai Strait. That modest fence, built sometime in the early sixth century, is the origin point of a city that has outlasted kingdoms, resisted demolition more than once, and quietly accumulated a string of records: the longest High Street in Wales, one of the oldest bishoprics in Britain, and a pier that a government inspector once called the best of its older type in the entire country.

  Today Bangor has a population of around fifteen thousand within the community boundaries, with the wider built-up area home to nearly seventeen thousand people. By almost any measure of physical size or population, it ranks among the smallest cities in the UK. Yet it holds city status not by royal grant but by what historians call ancient prescriptive right, a continuous legal inheritance stretching back through medieval charters and Norman bishops to that wattled enclosure on the slope above the Menai Strait.

  What makes a small city carry such a long history? How did a place bypassed by the main London-to-Dublin mail coach route for most of its early existence become a hub for slate, tourism, broadcasting, and football? The answers begin with a Celtic saint, an English king who marched an army here in 973, and a suspension bridge that changed everything.

• 2. Saint, Stone, and Ancient Rights

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  Deiniol, the Celtic saint credited with founding the first monastic settlement at Bangor, gave his name to the cathedral that still stands on the site. The Cathedral Church of St Deiniol is a Grade I Listed building, and Christian worship on that particular ground has continued since the sixth century. The present building dates from the twelfth century, with a two-bay chancel, transepts, a crossing tower, a seven-bay nave, and a tower at the west end.

  The bishopric of Bangor, rooted in that early monastic foundation, is one of the oldest in the UK. In 973, a power struggle at the level of Welsh royalty drew an English king directly into the city's story. Iago, ruler of the Kingdom of Gwynedd, was deposed by a rival named Hywel and appealed to Edgar, King of England, for help. Edgar came to Bangor with an army, brokered a power-sharing arrangement between the two claimants, and used the moment to assert his own supremacy by confirming the liberties and endowments of the Bishop of Bangor, granting land and gifts.

  From 1284 until well into the fifteenth century, Bangor's bishops received a succession of royal charters allowing them to hold fairs, govern the settlement, and eventually take the title of Lord of the Manor. For centuries the city was run not by any civic corporation but jointly by the parish vestry and the bishop in his role as lord of the manor. A government survey in 1835 found it plausible that Bangor had once had a corporation but could locate no evidence it had operated for many years. A formal municipal charter was only granted in 1883, making official what had in practice been episcopal administration for most of the city's life.

  When a government list was compiled in 1927 to record which settlements were cities, Bangor appeared as the only medieval Welsh city with rights still intact. St Davids had also held city status by prescriptive right but lost it in the 1880s and only had it formally restored in 1994.

• 3. Roads, Slate, and Growth

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  For most of its early centuries Bangor remained a small settlement, largely bypassed by the main artery of commerce. The principal mail coach route between London and Dublin via Holyhead ran to the east of the city, crossing the Lavan Sands to a ferry at Beaumaris on the Isle of Anglesey. That changed in 1718, when a sub-postmaster was appointed in Bangor and the mail route was redirected through the city to the Porthaethwy ferry instead. The diversion brought a measurable increase in trade passing through.

  Slate transformed the region's economy from the 1770s onwards. Richard Pennant began quarrying at nearby Bethesda, building what would become one of the largest slate quarries in the world. The ore moved through Port Penrhyn, the small port at the eastern edge of Bangor where the River Cegin meets the coast. Port Penrhyn was a significant export point for that slate throughout the nineteenth century.

  Thomas Telford's improvements to the London-to-Holyhead route brought the next wave of change. The road he built, now the A5, runs through the centre of Bangor. His Menai Suspension Bridge, completed in 1826, connected the city directly to Anglesey. Bangor railway station followed in 1848, and the combination of road and rail drew tourism, particularly from Liverpool via steamboat. Shipbuilding added another industrial strand to the city's economy.

  Friars School, which the source records was founded as a free grammar school in 1557, took on a remarkable second life in 1877 when it became a school ship moored on the Menai Strait with 260 pupils aboard. After the end of the First World War the vessel was sold for scrap and broken up in 1919. The University College of North Wales, now Bangor University, was founded in 1884, becoming the institution that would shape the city's character through the twentieth century and beyond.

• 4. Garth Pier

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  At 1,500 feet in length, Garth Pier is the second longest pier in Wales and the ninth longest in the British Isles. It opened in 1893 as a promenade pier, a place for holiday-makers to stroll among kiosks with pinnacle roofs.

  In 1914 a vessel broke free of its moorings and struck the pier. The Royal Engineers made a temporary repair, but when a permanent fix was considered in 1922, the damage turned out to be far worse than first assessed. Repairs went ahead at considerable cost, and the pier stayed open until 1974, when it was found to be in poor enough condition that demolition was proposed. Arfon Borough Council bought it for a nominal price with the intention of knocking it down.

  What saved the pier was a combination of local support and the County Council's intervention. The pier was given Grade II Listed building status, placing it beyond easy reach of the demolisher. A British Listed Buildings inspector, on the occasion of that listing, described it as the best example in Britain of the older style of pier without a large pavilion at the landward end. Restoration work ran from 1982 to 1988, and the pier was reopened to the public on the 7th of May 1988.

  By November 2011, essential repair work was again identified, with costs estimated at two million pounds. An application to the Heritage Lottery Fund was submitted but rejected, leaving the pier's long-term maintenance an open question.

• 5. Broadcasting and Visitors

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  During the worst of the Blitz in the Second World War, parts of the BBC evacuated from London to Bangor. The BBC's Light Entertainment Department was among those that relocated, and several classic programmes were made in the city during the war years, including It's That Man Again. The BBC has maintained facilities in Bangor ever since; today the city houses a small broadcasting centre that produces a significant volume of output for BBC Radio Cymru and serves as the main North West Wales newsroom for television, radio, and online services.

  In 1967, Bangor received a visit from The Beatles, who stayed in Dyfrdwy, one of the halls of what was then Adeilad Hugh Owen, now part of the university's Management Centre. They had come for their first meeting with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. During that stay, news arrived of the death of their manager Brian Epstein.

  On the 24th of February 2010, BBC Radio 1's The Chris Moyles Show broadcast live from Bangor to announce that the city would host Radio 1's Big Weekend concert festival. The lineup included Rihanna, MGMT, Kesha, Alicia Keys, Biffy Clyro, Pixie Lott, Cheryl Cole, Pendulum, and Dizzee Rascal.

  Bangor also has a long relationship with the National Eisteddfod, the major Welsh cultural festival. The city hosted the event in 1890, 1902, 1915, 1931-1940 (broadcast by radio), 1943, 1971, and 2005, as well as an unofficial event in 1874.

• 6. Language and Identity

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  Gwynedd is the most Welsh-speaking county in Wales; at the 2011 Census, 65.4% of people across the county said they could speak the language. Bangor has historically diverged from that pattern. As early as 1971, Bangor was already only 53.4% Welsh speaking, while nearby towns such as Bethesda and Caernarfon were still at 75-80% in 2011.

  By 2011, only 36% of Bangor's population said they could speak Welsh, down from 46% at the 2001 Census. The decline reflects the city's cosmopolitan character: at the 2011 Census, 49.3% of Bangor's population had been born outside Wales. The university draws students and staff from well beyond the region, and the city has long attracted incomers from England and further afield.

  The earlier picture was quite different. At the 1921 Census, 75.8% of Bangor's inhabitants could speak Welsh, with 68.4% of those aged 3-4 able to do so, indicating the language was being passed on in the home. The 1931 Census showed little shift, at 76.1% overall. The twentieth century brought a sustained reversal.

  In 2015, Welsh fluency among primary school pupils varied sharply between schools. Ysgol Y Garnedd recorded 61% of pupils speaking Welsh fluently at home. At Ysgol Ein Harglwyddes and Ysgol Cae Top, the figure was under 3%. That contrast within a single small city illustrates how uneven the linguistic landscape has become.

• 7. Football and Civic Life

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  Bangor City F.C. holds a notable place in Welsh football, having won the Welsh Premier League three times: in 1994, 1995, and 2011. The club was a continuous member of the league from its founding until 2018, when it dropped out. Before 1992, Bangor City competed within the English football pyramid, peaking with the Northern Premier League title in 1982 and finishing as FA Trophy runners-up in 1984. The club has also appeared in European competition three times in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, twice in the UEFA Champions League, and five times in the UEFA Cup, including the Cup Winners' Cup's final season in 1998-99 before that competition was folded into the UEFA Cup.

  Following financial difficulties at the club, supporters wanting to protect football in the city formed a breakaway, Bangor 1876 F.C., in the summer of 2019. On the 19th of June 2019, the Football Association of Wales announced the new club's acceptance into the Gwynedd League for the 2019-20 season.

  In 2021, Owen Hurcum was unanimously elected mayor of Bangor at the age of 22, becoming both the youngest-ever mayor in Wales and the first non-binary mayor of any UK city. In governance terms, the city council meets at Penrhyn Hall on Fford Gwynedd in a building constructed in 1866 as the Diocesan Registry, another reminder that civic and ecclesiastical authority in Bangor have long shared the same ground.

  Bangor has also been a site of firsts in policing: in 2012, it became the first city in the UK to impose a night-time curfew on under-16s throughout its centre, a six-month trial introduced by Gwynedd Council and North Wales police that drew opposition from civil rights groups. Marc Lloyd Williams, the Welsh Premier League's all-time top scorer with 319 goals, was born in the city.