Retaining wall with small jetty in Menai Strait

Cadw's description

Location

Sea wall alongside Menai Strait forming an ornamental feature in the foreground of Plas Newydd, with jetty at S end.

History

Built from 1796, when Lord Uxbridge paid a bill for 'Blasting Rock in Boathouse & Bath', probably designed by Wyatt and Potter. Completed by 1819, with 'William Peter, stone mason, coping the Port and Bath walls. Circular End of Pierhead finished'. Along the walk are 5 'trunnion' Carronades of c1830-45, from Fort Belan battery, given by Lord Newborough as a wedding present to Lord and Lady Anglesey in 1948. The harbour was leased to the H.M.S. Conway Training School in 1947, now leased by Cheshire County Council.

Exterior

Sea wall and terrace with 3 semicircular bastions, the central supporting a flagspole. Walls of roughly coursed and squared masonry with flat slab coping, plain stone band on seaward side. Between the bastions are two rectangular projections with Gothick arches below opening onto Menai Strait. To the S is a covered dock or plunge bath with brick arch ceiling, reached via stone steps and brick tunnel-vaulted passage. To the N is narrrow jetty projecting into Menai Strait (part of which has been washed away), reached through a subterranean room, through a Gothick arch flanked by 2 Gothick windows, the one to S being blind. Room with 2 bay cross vault in brick and stone bench along rear wall. Fireplace with massive squared stone lintel. At the S end of the sea wall is a curving harbour wall and slipway with a later parapet and a battlemented bastion set behind. At the N end of the harbour is a concrete swimming pool dating from the 1950s, probably utilising some of the original harbour wall, and a small stone building.

Reason for designation

Listed as a formal and ornamental foreground to Plas Newydd, when viewed from the Straits and eastern shore, gothick in character and almost miltary in idiom.