BANGOR, a parliamentary borough and market town of Caernarvonshire, North Wales, nine miles N.E. of Caernarvon, to which it is a contributory borough. It consists mainly of one narrow crooked street of nearly a mile in length, stretching N.E. and S.W. through a romantic valley between two ridges of rock. It stands near the northern entrance of the Menai Strait, and the beauty of its scenery attracts many visitors, whose numbers have greatly increased since the completion of the Chester and Holyhead Railway and the Britannia tubular bridge. The principal buildings are the cathedral, Episcopal palace, deanery-house, Roman Catholic chapel, several dissenting meeting-houses, free school, union poorhouse, infirmary, market-house, assembly-rooms, temperance-hall, three banks, and railway-station. The cathedral is an embattled cruciform structure, with a low massive tower crowned with pinnacles. It occupies the site of a more ancient edifice, originally founded about 525, but destroyed by the Anglo-Normans in 1071. It was afterwards rebuilt, but suffered severely in the wars between the Welsh and Henry III.; and in 1402 it was burned down during the ravages of Owen Glyndwr. For more than ninety years it remained in ruins. The choir was rebuilt by Bishop Dean in the time of Henry VII., and the tower and nave were added by Bishop Skeffington in 1532. The principal trade of Bangor consists in the export of slates, which are raised in the quarries six miles distant, and conveyed by a railway to Port Penrhyn, at the mouth of the River Cegid, a little to the east of the town. This port is accessible for vessels of from 200 to 300 tons at all states of the tide, and has a quay upwards of 300 yards in length. Pop. of burgh in 1851, 6338.