2-888-463 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Britannia Tubular Bridge across the Menai Straits - sketched from the Anglesey Shore, [Wales], 1850. 'Nothing can exceed the descriptive beauty of Sir Francis Head's picture of the country in which the Bridge is situated, as he saw it from a platform fifteen feet above the pinnacle of the Britannia Tower, which rises majestically out of the middle of the stream to a height of 230 feet. "The view was magnificent. On the east and west were to be seen glittering in large masses the Irish Sea and St. George's Channel, connected together by the narrow Straits, whose silvery course, meandering in the chasm beneath, was alike ornamented and impeded by several very small rocks and islands, round and about which the imprisoned stream evidently struggled with great violence".' From "Illustrated London News", 1850.