Holyhead is Not a Word
Beth McAulay sets off by train to explore the town at the end of the line
A departures board suspended above the concourse, beheld by some like a messianic tablet that stutters, trembles, taunts, offering only the flatline of an unallocated platform. Other passengers always seem to be issued more efficiently to their trains, rescued from their waiting. The rest of us, paralysed in our impatience, await the Euston to Holyhead.
Such frequent encounters with the word Holyhead were sufficient to emaciate my curiosity towards the town itself: it represented weary, delayed travel. It was a word untethered from its geographical demarcation, designating only the train that would transport me somewhere that was, in fact, not Holyhead. I might have contemplated once or twice whether anyone actually disembarked at the terminus. But considerations of the port town always existed in the substrata of my mind. They were the sort of negligible, evanescent thoughts spurred by the speed and shutter-feed of the landscape through the window’s aperture. Holyhead only ever occupied such transient transit thoughts, fossilising in that mental subterrain for many years. Useful only in the semantic flare of its name, in the same way that a whole lighthouse may be reduced only to the guidance of its bulb’s projection.
Of course, as a word, Holyhead retains its significance in demarcation; its letters inscribed on weather charts and simplified maps, embracing the expanses of Ynys Môn in its ample, upper-case type. Its toponymic familiarity is incidental to this: it is otherwise a town entirely peripheral, terminal. Holyhead can feel like a place without spatial and social dimension, almost not a place at all. Holyhead the place has perhaps disappeared into Holyhead the word, the signifier.
I resume a journey long prematurely ended by my disembarkation at an earlier station. The thin chill of the empty carriage is a relief, as is the scenery, which channels the serenity of an adolescent summer day. Our train searches through an ever-transitioning landscape: past towns and verdant vistas, over the vertiginous heights traversed by the Pont Britannia onto the plains of Anglesey. Finally it crosses the tendrilous Cymyran Strait onto the islet of Holy Island, to Holyhead.
For much of the journey, I’ve stoked some frustrations, to the politely concealed exasperation of those I’ve persuaded to accompany me. The view we’ve just been afforded of the myth-manufacturing crucible that is Snowdonia seems to have provoked this. I explain how the epithet Wales has earned as a ‘land of myth and legend’ strikes me as overly sentimental and specious, incompatible with my experience of Wales – the Wales I’ve only just witnessed through the window. I complain about how such a mythic characterisation can pervert an otherwise accurate, sober, and substantiated view of Wales: its landscapes, communities, history.
It seems punitive, then, that I arrive into Holyhead and immediately intuit something strange. Something held in the atmosphere; an eeriness easily attributable to the uncanny, the supernatural, or portentous. Exiting the station, we pass a gallery of disused waiting rooms, windows cataracted by dust, filled with wasting furniture and heaving ranges of discarded paper. A clock is suspended in stillness on the wall. There is palpable desolation, too, in the town centre, where the cawing of seagulls elastically snaps and frightens the air.
Holyhead’s central streets are permeated by a kind of directionless lethargy. Eroding curtains half-conceal the interiors of retail units long evacuated, the spectral impressions of old shop names haunting their rusted fascias. For Sale signs adhere weakly to the corners of windows, above moribund bluebottles rasping along the display shelves. The first, and possibly central, contradiction of Holyhead presents itself: that such a major port could exist alongside such economic atrophy; that a town so prominent could harbour such scarcity.
The further one diverges from the centre, navigating through the pebbledash residential areas, the more pronounced the sensation becomes that one is emerging upon a kind of precipice. Rather than encountering a town that revealingly unfolds itself, the place seems to fade, become less lucid. The promenade eventually conducts us down a path walled by voracious bracken, onto the Coastal Path. Here, we’re quickly confronted with a succession of details that seem to amount to an impression of the place. Perhaps, it is in these peripheral details, on the periphery of the town, that the character of Holyhead truly dwells, beneath its mantle of mundanity.
First a warning sign stands sentinel at the edge of the marina, prohibiting access to the waters. The dormant explosive wreck of the SS Castilian lies in subaquatic sediment, though the precise location is unspecified: it could be anywhere in the expanse of waters before us. But these waters are so tame, so tepid, that I am almost disbelieving of any such shipwreck being concealed within them, colonised by rusticles and calloused by reef fauna.
Beyond, the castellated carcass of Soldier’s Point, the neo-Gothic former residence of the Government contractor of Holyhead; repurposed variously since the Victorian age, it finally submitted to fire in 2011. Petals of white paint scale the exterior, overwhelmed by ivy and indecipherable graffiti. Barbed wire coils the perimeter. Approaching the edge of the land, we’re surrounded by mottled ochres, auburns, mauves of heather; slick-wet calcareous works welted by lichen; rivulets of water shyly slipping back to sea. It’s here that we witness the severed posterior, so cleanly precise as to have been surgically cauterised, of a rat.
My impression is diffuse and confused because the town is ultimately unassuming, though there is a strangeness that persistently hems the periphery of my encounter with it. I’m cautious, however, that I’m endeavouring to uncover some essential aspect of the town that simply doesn’t exist and consequently being seduced by sensationalistic ideas: of something lurking beneath dull superficialities. Of course, this was precisely what I was hypocritically arguing against throughout my journey here – the very attitude that I claimed distorted a truthful interpretation of a place.
It is in the Breakwater Country Park that I become, against my better judgement, most intrigued by this prospect of uncovering something strange or supernatural from Holyhead. Here, mountainous shafts cradle the old stone quarry, its chimney luring our approach through sun-glinting gorse. The half-deconstructed historic site houses a small gallery, and is situated adjacent to a café and a children’s park. Inside, I notice three memorial plaques: one laconic (‘Neddy 1914-1936’), the other two commemorating the respective falls of Ernest, aged 9, and Thomas, aged 14, from the nearby escarpments of North Stack. Again, amongst the unassuming tranquillity of threshing trees paling in the sunlight, amongst the sounds of ducks and swifts, something unsettling emerges. In the absence of much else to proclaim about Holyhead, I’m captivated by this undercurrent of desolation, and of tragedy.
I return home and realise what a fool I’ve been.
Immediately, I begin to collect my thoughts, which remain as slippery as the rocks I’ve clambered over earlier that day. I need to unify them into some statement, some profound insight. I inquire into the perceptions and preconceptions of those around me, primarily residents of the nearby regions of Denbighshire and Flintshire. I tell them of my intentions to write about Holyhead without any specified focus. Most of them are bewildered, and assert that there is simply nothing there.
Perhaps I can’t see the wood for the trees. Perhaps this nothingness – or even the fact that Holyhead is often considered to be little more than its port and namesake – is precisely what I’ve been neglecting to fully interrogate. It may be this quality that presents the town in an interesting light. It could be symptomatic of being situated on the edge, the very extremity of the country, that makes the place feel so deserted. Or, equally, this attribution of nothingness may be because Holyhead is typically understood not truly as a town at all, but as I have previously engaged with it: as a port, a terminus, a point of transference, a word.
For centuries, Holyhead has derived its purpose as ‘the great thoroughfare between kingdoms’. Its very existence is reputationally bound with, and economically dependent on, the ranks of vessels that affix themselves temporarily to its shores. But – existing as a locus of exchange, transportation, and movement – Holyhead seems stunned in the centre of this gyre of unsettled forces. Such a position means that the town appears waiting to be realised, without a wholly established identity or atmosphere. Because most of what finds itself here swiftly departs.
I encounter some challenges in obtaining any comments from residents of Holyhead. There are few pedestrians in the streets, and fewer who look available to be questioned. Even anchoring myself in a pub and acquainting myself with some locals is unavailing – there’s barely anyone around. Somewhat reluctantly, I succumb to local groups on the internet:
Hi all! I'm Beth, and I'm a journalist writing a piece on Holyhead, looking for various members of local communities to talk to about their experiences of the town.
First comment, quickly puncturing my brief swell of hope, is an animation with pyrotechnic text: STRANGER DANGER. Hmm.
Hi Roy, I’m only from Rhyl, so not that much of a stranger.
My dignity wounded despite a few likes of support, I inspect the other contributions of the man who has plummeted any hope I had in a journalistic career into peril. His most recent post on the page, by way of cruel irony, is precisely the sort of commentary I’m looking for:
the look of dismay from the passengers on the cruise ship in town is saddening, empty shops, graffiti, the only thing bright about the town centre at the moment is the flowers
I’m notified of another commenter: 2 friends and no visible link to holyhead? No thanks
Feeling partly defeated, I nonetheless recognise that such a reaction is familiar. It’s reminiscent of how defensive I become when my own hometown, Rhyl, is threatened by the criticism of outsiders. The two towns appear to be more compatible than I first presumed. And, this is only further evidenced by the reactions my post receives online: as innocuous as my introduction was, my curiosity makes me suspect (surely I only intend to opine maliciously?). I feel like an interloper. Their ranks close.
Whilst these residents of Holyhead freely announce their dissatisfactions with the town, my presence (and therefore my potential participation in this criticism) is deemed intrusive. As I say, I understand it. This sort of instinctive protectiveness seems reactive to being long subjected to bad mouthing and bad press. I’m unsurprised by this isolationist impulse – it’s something I often enact myself.
Fortunately, this mentioning of my own origin eases the exchange between myself and other members, softens their hostilities. A deluge of comments and messages arrive. One woman offers an anecdote: an encounter with a visitor from Arizona, USA, who wanted some recommendations of where to shop in the town. The woman resigned to tell her that there was ‘nowhere’:
They were shocked. It’s embarrassing for Holyhead. Seeing as it’s a main stop for MANY ships coming in.
The same sentiment is reiterated, as is the feeling of shame – a word which unifies many of the testimonies. Those who contact me seem acutely aware of how the town has degenerated in recent decades, and this is particularly saddening when residents envision how their home looks through the perspectives of those visiting. It was once a beautiful town, I’m told. But now, it’s an awful shame.
One comment recalls the privatisation of the port in the Thatcher era (it is currently owned by Stena Line), claiming that Holyhead now lies in ‘the control of whoever owns the port… with little or no say to the locals’. Despite it being one of the region’s largest employers, the port doesn’t seem to be stimulating the local economy in the way one might assume. Certainly, it doesn’t appear to be doing much to alleviate the destitution in the town centre.
The imminent establishment of the Anglesey Freeport promises, supposedly, to rectify this. Though, the expansion of Holyhead’s trade infrastructure doesn’t necessarily acknowledge the fact that the island is notably suffering from a limited array of professional options, in turn losing residents who seek more diverse employment prospects elsewhere. Perhaps more significantly, the expansion of Holyhead’s shipping infrastructure doesn’t counter the fact that the town already appears to be struggling to gain reputational independence from its port.
I may have to admit that being unresolved in my evaluation of Holyhead is because arguably the town hasn’t resolved itself. Its dual characters have not yet been joined. Is it a hub of industry, movement and trade? Or is it a town with community, history and permanence? These characters seem to coexist uneasily. And, for those who live outside of Holyhead’s parameters, the port unfortunately overshadows any impression of the locality.
Some of those who contact me online attest to how enriching it was, both for individuals and for the wider community, to work on the pre-privatised port. And, perhaps it is this sundering of the port from the essential fabric of local life that has, in turn, peripheralised the town, as though the port has been disintegrated from what it means to live in Holyhead; the two entities meeting but no longer wholly joining.
A sense of ownership over the port has been now lost to the communities who live in Holyhead. And therefore ownership over what the town is and aspires to be – beyond the image, reputation, and identity scaffolded by its port – is also lost.
Beth McAulay is a writer and freelance journalist from Rhyl. She wrote for Cwlwm once previously on the coastal resorts of north Wales.
I have just read this on the train Cardiff to Holyhead. 😂
Beautifully written, interesting read.