2-888-464 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Britannia Tubular Bridge - entrance from the Bangor Side, 1850. Steam train on the newly-opened bridge. '...showing two of the four colossal statues of lions - "we must not," says Sir F. Head, "compare them to sentinels, for they are couchant - which in pairs terminate the land ends of the abutments that on each side of the Straits laterally support its approaching embankment". They are composed of the same grey Anglesey marble as the towers. "These noble animals...although sitting, are each twelve feet high, twenty-five feet long, and weigh thirty tons. Their appearance is grand, grave, and imposing - the position they occupy being 180 feet in advance of the entrances into the two tubes, which so closely resemble that over the drawbridge into a fortress, that one looks up almost involuntarily for the portcullis".' From "Illustrated London News", 1850.