Early History
Construction of the causeway, known locally as ‘The Cob’, linking Penrhyn Isa on the Merioneth shore with the small rocky island called Ynys Towyn (where Britannia Terrace now stands in Porthmadog) near the Caernarfonshire shore, started in 1807 and was completed in 1811 during which time large quantities of stone was quarried and extracted from both ends. The embankment, which was the final stage of the Traeth Mawr land reclamation scheme, was 24 feet (7.3 m) wide at the top (where the railway now runs), 180 feet (55 m) wide at the base, 21 feet (6.4 m) deep and about 1 mile (1.6 km) in length. The quarrying created both the Britannia Terrace site at Porthmadog and the railway workshops site at Boston Lodge.
The site at Boston Lodge first held barracks for many of the 150 men working from the Merioneth side on the embankment construction, together with stables and smithies for the horses and wagons used to carry the stone. Later with the coming of the horsedrawn Festiniog Railway, the stables and smithies were brought back into use from 1836 onwards and there has been almost continuous development of the site for railway purposes since that time.
Read more about this topic: Boston Lodge
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