Chester and Holyhead Railway

The Chester and Holyhead Railway was incorporated out of a proposal to link Holyhead, the traditional port for the Irish Mail, with London by way of the existing Chester and Crewe Railway, and what is now the West Coast Main Line. Indeed, the carriage of the Irish Mail was always the primary objective of the founding Directors.

When Queen Elizabeth I decided to establish a weekly post to Ireland in 1572, the route via Chester and Liverpool was chosen, before being switched four years later to Holyhead, which represented a shorter sea crossing.

The weekly post was sufficient when there was an English or British Parliament in London and an Irish Parliament, with urgent messages carried by civil servants, usually on horseback. The post improved slowly, and by 1784 the Turnpike Acts had resulted in improved roads on which a mail coach operated almost daily from London to Holyhead, taking 45 hours to make the journey.

With the passing of the Act of Union in 1800, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, elected Irish members of the new United Kingdom Parliament sought the same quality of travel and postal facilities as their fellow members from England, Wales and Scotland. Improvements continued slowly, and by the time Thomas Telford had completed his A5 road with improvements through Shrewsbury, Llangollen, Betws-y-coed, Bangor and his Menai Suspension Bridge in 1826, the London to Holyhead journey was down to under 30 hours. The first steam packet boats had entered service between Holyhead and Dublin in 1819 and soon they were operating out of Liverpool as well.

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