The piers of the bridge, and the toll-house at the western extremity, are built in strict keeping with the architecture of the castle. An embankment, formed of hard clay, faced with solid masonry of stone, and stretching from the insular rock to the western shore of the county of Denbigh, a length of 671 yards, with a breadth of 30 feet, and an extreme elevation of 54 feet, exhibits one of the finest and firmest _chaussées_ in the world.
The church, though ancient, contains scarcely anything worthy of notice, except the following inscription, engraved on a stone in the nave of the building, which, though found in Pennant and other tourists, is so curious as to deserve repetition: “Here lyeth the body of Nicholas Hookes, of Convey, gentleman, (who was the forty-first child of his father, Wm. Hookes Esq. by Alice, his wife,) the father of twenty-seven children, who died the 27th day of March, 1637.” In the market-place is an old building called Plâs Mawr, which was erected more than two centuries ago. It is deserving the notice of the antiquarian. The town is surrounded by a very thick wall, strengthened by twenty-four towers, most of which remain in tolerable preservation.
Miss Costello seems to have been thoroughly enraptured with Conway, of which she says, “I think no description, however enthusiastic, can do justice to one of the most romantic and interesting spots that exists perhaps in Europe. Although the modern bridge, which carries the road across the river to the castle walls, looks, as it is of course, of a very different date from the antique structure, yet there is something so singular, so beautiful, and so aërial in a suspension bridge, that it can scarcely be thought out of character with the Moorish-looking towers and turrets to which it leads, which are as light and graceful as itself, in spite of their immense strength and power. With all the legends of supernatural buildings with which Wales abounds, it would not be difficult for the imagination to conceive that the Genii threw these delicate chains over the wide space that divides the castle from the opposite rocks, and thus obtained a triumph over the giant who kept the fortress. Both near and at a distance it has a beautiful effect, and is even more graceful than the surprising work over the Menai Straits.