Welcome
Gathering the Jewels features over 30,000 images of objects, books, letters, aerial photographs and other items from museums, archives and libraries throughout Wales.
Search the map
New to Gathering the Jewels is G.I.S. A geographical search facility that will enable searching by location and place name.
Aerial photograph of Britannia Tubular Bridge, Menai Straits, 1989
Britannia bridge was designed by Robert Stephenson, son of the locomotive pioneer George Stephenson, and was built during the 1840s to carry trains from the mainland to Anglesey. The construction of this 'tubular bridge' posed a number of difficult engineering challenges. The two iron tubes, which measured 472 feet long and weighed around 1800 tons each, were floated into position, then raised by hydraulic pumps to their final destination
In 1970 the bridge was almost destroyed by fire and was rebuilt as a two-level bridge, carrying both train and road traffic.






