BANGOR (formerly Bangor Fawr, as distinguished from several other towns of this name in Wales, Ireland and Brittany), cathedral city and municipal borough of Carnarvonshire, North Wales, population (1931) 10,959. It is situated at the northern entrance to the Menai strait, at the junction of the coast road with ways from Nant Ffrancon and Llanberis. Settlement in the neighbourhood is indicated by a British camp of supposed Roman date on a height overlooking the town. Roman connections are slight, but there are traditions of its religious and educational fame in the days of Celtic Christianity. The cathedral dedicated to St. Deiniol seems to have associations with this period. During the middle ages the building suffered severely from raids from the hills around, notably at the hands of Glyn Dwr (Glendower, q.v.) in 1404, and it remained in a poor state of repair until the 19th century. Slight traces of a Norman motte and bailey castle exist on the summit of a steep rock opposite Friars school. A free grammar school was established in 1557 on the site of a con vent of White Friars and is still known as the Friars school. The town showed marked conservative tendencies during the Civil Wars and the i8th century, but the influence of the quarry work ers of the neighbourhood during the r9th century made the town a centre of the national, religious and educational movements of the period.
The University college of North Wales was founded in Bangor in 1884, and in 1893 it became a constituent college of the Uni versity of Wales. Its permanent buildings, finely situated on a hill, were opened in 1911 and have received large additions opened in 1926 as a North Wales memorial to those who gave their lives in the World War. The city already possessed a North Wales Counties' Training college which had an unusually distinguished succession of students in its early days. There is also a Training college connected with the Episcopal church and a Theological college associated with the Baptist and Independent churches.
The town has grown in somewhat distinct parts; that near the straits, that near the cathedral and that on the height near the University college. Port Penrhyn nearby exports the slates of the Bethesda and Penrhyn slate quarries in the valleys of Snow donia. Bangor was made a municipal borough in 1883 and is one of the boroughs of Carnarvonshire for purposes of parlia mentary representation.