Reaching for water

When we moved to Bangor in 2022, the couple we bought our house from had told us that there was an underground river running at the bottom of our street. I'd spent the previous 18 months walking the routes of the hidden rivers that flow underneath the streets of London, so this was a sign to me that we'd chosen the right town to move to. That river flowing under Bangor is the Adda.

Over the last two and a half years, I've walked the route of the Adda countless times, from its source near a retail carpark on the edge of town, through the centre of Bangor, to where it trickles out into the Menai Strait at Hirael Bay. Bangor is built in the valley of this river, so just walking into town from our home leads me along its path. Although the Adda runs entirely underground, if you look carefully you'll spot signs of its existence. When it rains, which is most of the time, you might see sandbags outside the now closed Poundland in the city centre, or hear water loudly flowing under a manhole outside a Chinese restaurant. Nearby, there's an information board detailing efforts more than a decade ago to redirect culverts under the war memorial. Out on Caernarfon Road, you'll find a small waterfall in the carpark of an electrical trades store, where water rushes down into the subterranean culvert from a second source up by a holding pond on Bangor Mountain. I've traced the stream up into the hills here, where old hollow ways and drovers' paths lead back into the past. But it was only last year that someone told me that the main source of the Adda was down here in the valley, rising somewhere between B&Q and Curry's in the suburban retail parks along Caernarfon Road. At the beginning of the twentieth century, this plot of land was Fferm Mab Adda, or Son of Adam's farm.

I'm far from the first person to discover the hidden Afon Adda. Large sections of the river weren't even culverted (submerged in underground pipes) until the 1960s. When I asked a question about the Adda on a local Facebook group, dozens of Bangor locals told me stories about catching newts and frogs in open water near the source of the river, or falling in to what was affectionately known by Bangor residents as Afon Gachu (Shit River). I've heard older residents recalling memories of slaughterhouses and breweries on the river's banks, and an industrial laundry that used the water of the Adda to run its machines. One responder on Facebook even told me of what appeared to be a wooden jetty, discovered during construction work outside what was once the Bishop of Bangor's palace, almost a mile inland from the Menai Strait. I was struck by the amount of people who responded when I asked about memories of the Adda. The river seems to occupy an important space in many people's connection with this town, and with their own history. 

For me, an outsider from a city of 8 million people, this is a connection that's difficult to fully understand. The Adda is not my river. But my curiosity about where it flows, and what once stood on its banks, has allowed me to understand this place a little better. It's given me something to hold on to and to build from. 

I've just published a photographic zine exploring these ideas. You can download a digital copy here: From Glanadda (pdf)

I've also created an annotated digital map of the route the Adda takes under Bangor. That can be found here: Yr Afon Adda

If you would like a paper copy of the zine, please let me know.