North Wales by Drone. Episode 54/2021 - Ynys Gored Goch
Ynys Gored Goch ("Red Weir Island"), sometimes Ynys Gorad Goch, is a small island in the Menai Strait between Gwynedd and Anglesey in north Wales. It is situated in the stretch of the strait called the Swellies between Thomas Telford's Menai Suspension Bridge and Robert Stephenson's Britannia Bridge.
The island is occupied by the main house and the converted smoke house where locally caught fish were processed. The island is private property and access is only by boat.
The earliest known document relating to the island dates from 1590 when it is listed as belonging to the Diocese of Bangor which leased it for £3 and a barrel of herrings a year as the island was used as a fishing trap and presently has the remains of two fishing weirs. The weirs are thought to have been constructed at the same time as the smoking chamber was built, around 1842, in the path of eddy currents that would take the fish into the weirs and leave them trapped as the tide retreated.
After 1888 when the house was sold into private hands the whitebait (herring), business was developed, and growing tourism in the 20th century meant people would often travel to the island to taste the fish. A bell by the Anglesey shore summoned a boat to carry visitors across to enjoy a 'Gored Whitebait Tea' which comprised a pot of tea, brown bread and butter and whitebait ‘fried in a basket’, priced one shilling.