City of Bangor Welsh Towns

This town on the North Wales coast has a rich history

going back over 1,500 years.

It's actually a small city, since it has a cathedral at its heart.

And it's set in a stunning location.

It boasts the only painting by Rembrandt in Wales,

claims to have the longest high street in Britain

and the man who lived here

owned one of the largest slate mines in the world.

Slate, saints and scholars have made the city what it is today.

This is the story of Bangor.

# Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to Bangor?

# Singing a few of our favourite songs as the wheels went around

# Yah-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da-da Da-da-da-da... #

When Fiddlers Dram sang about Bangor in their single of the 1980s,

and it was this Bangor,

this bustling university city had its 15 minutes of fame.

People came here to see what Bangor was all about.

People have been coming here in their thousands for years,

either as tourists, students or migrant workers,

but the story of the town begins with a different kind of traveller.

His name was Deiniol - a Celtic saint who came here, stayed,

and set up his monastery back in the year 525.

That's 70 years before Canterbury was established.

This site is a Welsh first.

Bangor became the religious centre for Gwynedd and Anglesey.

Nowadays, the cathedral has this dull-looking iron railing running around it,

but when Deiniol was in charge, he enclosed his cathedral in this -

wattle fencing.

Poles driven in vertically and branches weaving in and out.

And the traditional name of this fencing? Bangor.

There are several Bangors in Wales, Northern Ireland and America,

but people around here like to think that this is the original.

ORGAN PLAYS

Over the years, the wattle fence was replaced by a solid stone church.

It was completely destroyed in the wars of Welsh independence

but, almost two centuries later,

it was rebuilt in the shape and form that we can see today.

It's not the largest of cathedrals

but it has got the largest organ in Wales.

ORGAN PLAYS

Built over 200 years ago, with 4,210 pipes,

it's one of the finest organs in the United Kingdom.

I'm not sure how much the organist

would have been paid in the 19th century,

but being the boss of this cathedral was an attractive proposition for any bishop.

One of the wealthiest was Bishop Bethell, who came here in 1830.

Bishop Bethell, his income was about £8,000 a year.

The Prime Minister earned around £5,000 a year.

So he was a very wealthy person.

Probably the equivalent of about £330,000 a year income

-in modern-day terms.

-Where did all this money come from?

From lands the bishop owned, rights over ferries,

rights over fisheries at Gored Goch

and other incomes from other parishes.

-And it was a springboard. People came to Bangor on their way to...

-On their way to other places.

London, Durham, York, St Paul's, Canterbury.

Now, the choir is well known in its own collective right,

but isn't there one special chorister?

One special former chorister, yes. Aled Jones.

He started here in the choir stalls up there.

He's gone on to world renown as a musician, a singer,

a presenter, a television personality in his own right.

And it all started there.

To understand any town,

you have to understand the landscape that surrounds it.

Bangor lies on the North Wales coast

with Caernarfon to the west and Llandudno to the east.

Its position has been a strategic one on the route between London

and Holyhead and on to Ireland.

Today, crossing the Strait over to Anglesey

can be done either over the Britannia

or the magnificent Menai Bridge,

but things were not always so simple.

In ancient times, this would have been one of the crossing points to Anglesey.

At low tide, you'd set off on foot across the Lavan Sands in the direction of Beaumaris

and hope there would be a boat waiting to take you over the last few treacherous yards of water

on to Anglesey.

This was the route taken by the postal service established by Elizabeth I.

Mail from London to Ireland went via Beaumaris,

but this was a notoriously dangerous route, particularly in bad weather.

If travellers got the timing wrong,

they could be swept away on the incoming tide.

A decision was made in the early 1700s to look for a safer route

for the Royal Mail through Bangor.

They took advantage of a ferry service from the George Hotel.

But, once again, it proved a difficult ride.

Over the centuries, dozens have perished while crossing the Strait.

Ferries carrying up to 90 passengers have capsized

with only a few survivors.

Nelson said if you could sail on the Menai Strait,

you could sail anywhere.

When the Act of Union was passed in 1800, uniting Great Britain and Ireland,

Irish MPs needed to travel to Westminster

and their long route took them across the Irish Sea to Holyhead,

through Bangor and onwards to London.

The journey time had to be shortened.

There was only one man for the job.

Thomas Telford - the best engineer of the day.

His first task was to build a road from Shrewsbury to Bangor.

The town became a staging-post to refuel the horses.

The Penrhyn Arms, built by the influential Pennant family of Penrhyn Castle,

was the coaching inn for the Royal Mail

and was certainly the best hotel in town.

Building the road was the easy part for Thomas Telford.

Building a bridge was quite a different matter.

On 10th August, 1819,

the first of these giant foundation stones were laid.

In all, 800 men over seven years toiled on the project in all conditions.

They were rewarded with ale

or, if the weather was too bad, with the hard stuff.

But just look at the precision of their work, the delicacy of the architecture.

It is a wonder of engineering.

People flocked to see

what was the largest suspension bridge in the world.

It became a national treasure and put Bangor on the map.

The Irish MPs were delighted.

Dublin, Holyhead, and now this to London.

The locals were delighted too because they no longer had to

risk their lives going back and forth across this by ferry.

A second bridge was built in 1850 by Robert Stephenson,

providing a direct rail link between London and Holyhead.

In 1970, it was destroyed by fire.

It was rebuilt double-decker style with a road above the railway line.

As transport links grew back in the 19th century, so did the town's population.

So, what was it that brought them to Bangor?

Part of the answer is this stuff.

Slate.

In the 1770s, a wealthy Englishman by the name of Richard Pennant arrived in Bangor.

The town was about to change dramatically.

Pennant's family had made their millions from the sugar plantations and the slave trade in Jamaica.

Richard was quite the entrepreneur

and was determined to make even more money.

And this was where he came to invest the family inheritance.

Not in the deep blue waters but in the black stuff.

Penrhyn Quarry, Bethesda.

This was to become one of the largest slate quarries in the world.

Richard Pennant's workforce risked their lives on these grey, rugged slabs.

It was dangerous, low-paid work

but, for the master, slate was a lucrative business.

His aim was to ship all the slate that came out

of this massive hole in the ground to destinations around the world.

But one big problem for him was how to get the slate

from the quarry in Bethesda down to his port in Bangor.

His solution was to build first a tram road and then this.

The Penrhyn Quarry Railway.

Going one way, from 500 feet down to sea level, was easy.

Today, it's a tranquil and pretty cycle route down to Bangor.

But back then, it would've been noisy, dirty, sweaty.

But it did achieve its aim.

The train could move substantially more slate

than horse and manpower had done previously.

The Pennant Railway was an expressway to riches.

Six miles later, what a beautiful run that was. Mostly downhill.

This is Port Penrhyn, built by Richard Pennant.

From here he could ship his slate

anywhere in the world he could sell it.

There are still a few remnants of the past in the port today.

And at the heart of the port, a 12 seater men's toilet.

KNOCKS ON DOOR

It's engaged.

In its heyday, this was an international port,

as Dafydd Roberts, curator of the Welsh Slate Museum, explains.

Exports were sent from here not just to Britain

but as far afield as North America, Australia,

even as far as China and Brazil.

Welsh slate found its way internationally.

If you're a docker here, dealing in slate,

are you in a different industry from those in Bethesda, digging it up?

-Yes, you are.

-What happens if the quarry's on strike?

There's evidence to suggest that the dockers

and those that service the port keep on working.

They don't actually see themselves as part of the quarry community.

They see themselves as being a class apart, if you like.

Certainly, they were never bound up in the labour disputes

like the Penrhyn strike between 1900 and 1903, for example.

I'm interested in what you're carrying.

This is a school writing slate and these were made, actually,

by the thousand here in Port Penrhyn a century, two centuries ago.

Several factories in the vicinity of the port were producing these

and we actually stole the monopoly from Switzerland

in the late 18th century.

They had the monopoly for producing these, we took over.

-Yeah? More money for his lordship?

-Absolutely.

And all that money meant that his lordship lived in quite a house.

This is Penrhyn Castle, built in the 19th century.

It's an extraordinary fantasy.

It says, "Look at me! Look what I can build."

It's a monument in stone to the power and wealth of the Pennant family.

Now owned by the National Trust,

it was one of the largest private homes in Wales.

Crammed with ornate staircases, elaborate carvings and plasterwork,

it's a Gothic showcase.

It's also home to an impressive private art collection,

including the portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet by Rembrandt,

valued at £40 million.

The lucky few living within these walls lived a life beyond luxury,

of opulence, mingling with royalty and prime ministers.

Of course, to make all this work, you would need a good butler.

Very hard to find.

Penrhyn Castle and its opulence remain for all to see,

unlike the Penrhyn Arms hotel, that is a mere shadow of its former self.

As a coaching inn, it fell on hard times

when the railway came to Bangor,

but there was life for the old building yet.

It became a university.

How good was that? A university in a pub!

When the doors opened in October 1884,

there were just 58 students and 10 staff.

Annual fees then ranged from £10 to £15.

The university remained here

until a new purpose-built building was created on top of the hill.

Some years later, the Penrhyn Arms was demolished.

Today, the portico is all that remains

of such an important landmark in the city's history.

The university building dominates the city

but there was no guarantee it would end up here.

Bangor won the battle against its North Wales rivals

because it already had a teacher training college

and because of its good rail and road links.

The architect of the new university building

had looked to the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge for inspiration

and Bangor became known as the Athens of Wales.

It was a boom time for education,

but the students weren't here all year round.

Bangor was looking for the next big thing,

how to take advantage of the city being so well served

by road and rail.

They had a plan to make Bangor the Brighton of the north,

to make it a base for tourists and travellers

who wanted to "do" North Wales.

Nowadays, if you want to attract tourists, there's a checklist.

Clean beach, five star hotel, Michelin star restaurant.

In Victorian times, you needed a pier,

so they built this magnificent example

and you could walk halfway to Anglesey.

By the beginning of the 1970s,

this wonderful pier was on its last legs and had to be closed.

Following an outcry from the local community,

it was eventually restored to its former Victorian glory.

There was one other delight in store for Victorian visitors to Bangor.

Without a beach, the town couldn't compete with other coastal resorts

such as Llandudno and Rhyl,

so they constructed Siliwen open air baths,

the first in the country to allow mixed bathing.

Bangor tried hard to make it into the tourist books

but without a decent beach or a medieval castle, they struggled.

Bangor may have failed to make it as a tourist attraction

but what it did attract were these and these.

It became the retail heart of the region

and the long high street was an almost endless parade of shops.

In 1910, the high street was a shopper's paradise.

42 grocers, 21 butchers, 33 drapers, 23 bakers and confectioners

and 13 boot and shoemakers.

And if you had money, you would head for the two big shops,

Pollecoff and Wartski.

Both Jewish families who escaped persecution in Russia

and came to Bangor to open drapery and jewellery stores.

Tell us about the Wartskis.

The Wartski family were a very notable family in Bangor.

The patriarch of the family was Morris Wartski, who came to Bangor

in the 1880s and set up a drapery business and a jewellery company.

And it was his son, Isidore, who set up a fashion store in Bangor.

Some called it the Harrods of Bangor, because it was quite a pricy

and quite an affluent store.

Isidore Wartski was a very, very popular man in Bangor.

He was elected to the council in 1924 and served on the council

for 15 years, until he was elected mayor in 1939 until 1941.

-Are there any traces of the Wartskis in Bangor?

-There are.

There's Wartski's Field, which was donated by Isidore Wartski's wife

in the 1960s in memory of her husband.

And in London also. The business was expanded to London in 1911,

and it's there they got their first Royal Warrant

and they still hold that to this day.

In April 2011, for instance,

they were responsible for creating wedding rings for the Royal Family.

And it's amazing really to think they started off in Bangor

and are now jewellers to the Royal Family.

Another famous Bangor landmark was HMS Clio,

moored here at the turn of the last century.

For 43 years, she was a training ship,

preparing boys for a life at sea,

but was known locally as the naughty boys' ship.

Is it true, Gareth, that you were threatened with the Clio?

I'm afraid I was. Every time me and my brother misbehaved,

I remember my father saying, "We're going to send you to the Clio."

And I'm sure that's true for many contemporaries of mine

who come to this pub.

The myth and legend lived on well beyond the '20s.

Is that because it was such a hard place?

-Or did it serve a good purpose?

-Oh yes, indeed.

That was the whole ethos, was to reform children who'd been deprived

or were orphans who had no guidance.

Life was extremely hard.

They had to be up at 5:30am and then they had to scrub the decks,

they had to do all kind of drills, go up in the rigging.

But they were also well fed, they had three meals a day.

So by the standards of the day, they were looked after in that respect.

And how did this chapter in Bangor's history close?

I guess it must've been the end of the First World War in 1918

that brought this kind of disciplinarian society to an end,

the questioning of everything about the war,

and she was scrapped in 1920

and, I suppose, never to be resurrected again.

-We'd better raise a glass to the Clio.

-Indeed.

-And the boys.

-And the boys.

-Cheers.

-Cheers, Eddie.

When war was declared in July 1914,

preparations were already under way

for the National Eisteddfod to be held in Bangor.

But soldiers from the city were marching off to the front

and there was no appetite for Eisteddfod.

The Eisteddfod was eventually held a year later,

but it turned into a military affair.

Brigadier General Owen Thomas suggested shooting competitions

would be more appropriate than singing and dancing.

Lloyd George arrived surrounded by soldiers

and recruiting officers waited outside the Pavilion.

Bangor would suffer terribly.

The memorial arch in the town is a shrine

to the 8,000 soldiers from North Wales

who lost their lives in the war.

Bangor did recruit very, very strongly,

and over 200 of them were killed, which is quite a high proportion.

Inevitably, if you start stirring people at the Eisteddfod

to go to war,

-there must be a tie-up in terms of tragedy.

-Absolutely.

It was a strategy adopted from the early stages of the war

to try to recruit what they called pals battalions.

The whole idea was these young people should go with their friends

and their neighbours into the war.

And indeed, the ethos of the training in the North Wales counties

was to try to use the Welsh language as much as possible.

So there was a strong sense of trying to preserve the national identity

and the local identities of the young men who joined these battalions.

But what hadn't been taken into consideration was what happened

when these young people went into battle all on the same day,

from the same village, sometimes on the same street,

and many of the Bangor young men were killed in battles like Mametz Wood,

which was one of the very bloody battles of the Somme in 1916.

20 years later and Bangor was again facing the consequences of war.

People descended on the town seeking refuge and a safe haven.

Nearly 3,000 evacuees came from Liverpool.

The naval training ship, HMS Conwy, warships and Catalina flying boats

were all a familiar sight on the waters of the Menai Straits.

And the BBC rolled into town, away from the London Blitz.

Tommy Handley's programme was broadcast

from Penrhyn Hall in Bangor

and became one of the most popular radio series of the war.

'Strategical susceptibility, his infantile indefatigability

'and his tendency towards tactical turbidity, he still remains...'

But during one show, a bomb landed outside the hall,

causing panic on the streets of the town.

Not even Bangor escaped the horrors of war.

1 Penrhyn Road on the Maesgeirchen estate

was completely demolished by a German bomb.

More than 200 other houses were damaged

and three people killed, including a BBC chauffer

evacuated to Bangor to the supposed safety of the city.

After the War, a brave new world emerged in Britain and Bangor.

For the very first time, the working classes were heading to college

and the University of North Wales was expanding.

This led to concern in Bangor that the university was being Anglicised

and losing its Welsh roots.

Students in Bangor played their part throughout the 1960s

by demanding more teaching in Welsh.

By the 1970s, they were making the headlines.

In 1976, they occupied the university offices.

Over the next three years,

this university became the place of protest, of occupation.

English language notices were torn down and burnt,

slogans were painted.

And the response of the authorities?

In these three years, 12 students were suspended.

One of the 12 was postgraduate student, Ioan Edgar.

What form did the protest take? What did you do?

We devised quite a few protests which obviously angered the college.

Many of them were trivial, some were probably more extreme.

The one I was expelled on,

it was implied that I stood on this very sundial here.

It was part of the synchronisation of filling the three libraries

with orange smoke from boat flares.

That actually angered the college and I got sent out for that one.

We occupied the new art block on perhaps three occasions

and we paralysed the college during that period

because they couldn't administer.

If we get to the heart of the matter, did it succeed?

Very peripherally.

It awakened some element of that these places had been left

to their own devices for too long perhaps.

But in general terms,

would Wales now not have a greater Welsh awareness than in the '70s?

Certainly so. That's improved.

We are very much more conscious of the value of the language

and a re-evaluation has happened

since that period when we were protesting here.

Today, a quarter of the 10,000 students in Bangor can speak Welsh,

and half of them choose to study at least a part of their course

in their mother tongue.

Sporting successes have also played their part in Bangor's history.

There have been rugby and football clubs in Bangor since 1876.

A few years later, Bangor was one of the 11 founding members

of the Welsh Rugby Union, the only club from north Wales.

There are famous Bangor rugby sons - Dewi Bebb, Tony Gray, Robin McBryde.

Wales' first try scored against England in 1884

was scored by a Bangor player, Charles Allen.

But to be honest, in Bangor, football rules.

This has been home to Bangor City Football Club since 1919,

Farrar Road.

Welsh Premier League football

but also big nights in European competitions.

Napoli and one big night in the European Cup Winners' Cup

against Atletico Madrid.

Farrar Road has had some special moments.

It was 1985 when they faced the Spanish superstars.

OK, they lost 2-0 but Bangor City's spirit

was about more than just football.

Thatcher was in her pomp and telling us

that the idea of community was outmoded.

But Bangor had earned the right to host this match

against the biggest team in the competition, Atletico Madrid.

But, you know, UEFA had its rules.

You've got to have this, you've got to have that.

It was like something out of an Ealing Comedy.

You've got three weeks to get this ground ready for the big match.

You did have hundreds of people here after work coming here

with a pot of paint and literally painting the walls

and relaying the concrete or whatever needed to be done.

It was heart-warming that we had the sense of community

that Thatcher said wasn't there.

No-one in Farrar Road was reading that script, you know?

Bangor City are moving

and this historic ground will soon be a supermarket.

The new stadium on the outskirts of town offers a bright future.

Things are changing in Bangor.

By the university, a building site

where Theatr Gwynedd once stood.

This will be home to a brand new £37 million arts complex

belonging to the university but open to all the people of Bangor.

Port Penrhyn may not be the bustling port it once was

but it is till a working port and still exporting slate.

The big export from the port today are these.

Muscles from the Straits are sent to the continent,

all 10,000 tonnes a year.

But it's the 10,000 students who make Bangor what it is.

In term time they double its population

and fill it with their energy.

Saint Deiniol, Richard Pennant.

All who come here are touched in some way by what they find.

And it's all to do with the setting.

What is here cannot be shifted easily.

In Bangor, you cannot beat this.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd