A bit of water and Brexit now stand in the way of the journey from Dublin to London but at least travelling is simple. Most people fly. Some catch the ferry and drive or pile on Virgin Trains for the run down from Holyhead.
There’s no glory but you usually get there.
In the 18th century things were different. You couldn’t fly, of course – as a young army cadet found out in May 1785 when he jumped into a balloon being exhibited at Dublin barracks.
Throwing out the ballast, he waved his hat at the watching crowd and shot above Howth in the direction of Holyhead. Nine miles offshore he dropped into the Irish Sea, from which he was rescued after swimming for almost an hour.
The more common way to travel was by sailing ship and then on foot or carriage through storms and deep mud on roads which hardly existed.
It was something to be attempted as infrequently as possible. Jonathan Swift, who endured it many times, described Holyhead as “an unprovided and comfortless place”. The route to London, he told his friend Alexander Pope, took him “through many nations and languages unknown to the civilised world”.
That was an unkind joke about the Welsh but he was not exaggerating the difficulties of travel.
Storms
Ships could sink on the way to Holyhead or be delayed by gales or a lack of wind. If you made it to Anglesey things did not get much better.
There was the tricky ferry ride to the mainland at Menai to survive – not everyone did – and after that there was Snowdonia to cross, or the rough coastal track past Conwy, which in places was awash at high tide. Even the long slog to London through the Midlands was a trial.
Someone had to sort it out and the man who did was the great civil engineer Thomas Telford.
Writing the story of his life, I have also traced the history of links between the Irish and British capitals.
Some work was done before 1800 to improve the turnpike roads but it was the creation of the United Kingdom in 1801 that really spurred change.
The incorporation that year of the Irish parliament into the House of Commons in London meant that politicians had no choice but to travel – and they started making a fuss.
“The frequent journeys made by the Irish members produced constant irritation and complaint,” Telford wrote, “and gave rise to warm discussion in Parliament.”
One engineer, John Rennie, was soon employed to sort out the landing at Holyhead but it was Telford, the man they turned to rebuild the road and bridge the Menai Strait, who made the biggest difference. He turned the route into one of the fastest and smoothest in the world.
Telford’s story is remarkable. Born on a remote farm in the Scottish borders, he worked first as a shepherd boy and stonemason before forcing his way to the front rank of engineering through a mix of drive, skill and personal charm.
He led the use of iron in place of stone for bridges, built great canals and opened up the Highlands of Scotland with new roads. But it was his route from London to Holyhead, and especially the section through north Wales to Holyhead, which stands as his greatest monument.
Travel by car today and you will probably miss it – most drivers take the A55 expressway, which crosses Robert Stephenson’s adapted Britannia rail bridge from Anglesey and ploughs along the coast.
Divert from this, however, and you can still drive over Telford’s pioneering Menai Suspension Bridge, a sensation in its time, and along the almost unaltered course of his beautiful road, now the A5, though the Welsh mountains.
He built it with the backing of Sir Henry Parnell, an Irish landowner and politician with a liberal mind – and the great-uncle of Charles Parnell. It was Parnell who found Telford the political support and funds that allowed him to build his new road to the highest standards and risk a suspension bridge at Menai when nothing of that kind had been built anywhere before.
He started work in 1815, aged 58, walking through Wales to survey the route and by the following summer building was under way.
The route was full of bombast. “This arch was constructed in the same year that the Battle of Waterloo was fought” boasts one inscription.
The centrepiece was the bridge at Menai, started in 1818 and opened eight years later.
By then technology was shifting – steam ferries soon ran direct to Liverpool and trains came to Holyhead in the 1850s. Telford’s road faced competition. But the journey from Dublin had been transformed for the better.
Man of Iron: Thomas Telford and the Building of Britain
, by Julian Glover, is published by Bloomsbury on January 26th.