Sometime in the 19th century, a fox went to ground in the ruins of a small medieval chapel near Moelfre on Anglesey, and the men who came to dig her out discovered something the chapel had been hiding for three hundred years. Beneath the floor of the south chapel was a vault containing several human skeletons, which - according to the local account that has come down the years - 'crumbled into dust, when exposed to the air.' Capel Lligwy is that kind of place: ruined, quiet, easy to miss, and full of pieces of medieval Anglesey that the centuries have not quite cleared away.
The oldest stones in Capel Lligwy were laid in the first half of the 12th century. That timing matters. For most of the previous two hundred years, Anglesey had been a target for Viking raiders - the same Norsemen who used the Isle of Man as a base and treated Welsh coastal monasteries as opportunities. As the raids tapered off and the Normans turned their attention elsewhere, churches finally began going up in stone instead of timber, and Capel Lligwy was one of them. No one knows who it was dedicated to. It might have been a memorial chapel for someone important; it might have been built to serve a royal commot court that met nearby; it might simply have been a chapel of ease in a large parish whose population had outgrown the mother church. The dedication, the founder, the saint - all lost.
The chapel was extended in the 14th century - you can see the change in the masonry style about five feet up the walls, where the original large blocks give way to smaller rubble. In the 16th century someone built the unusual south chapel with its vaulted burial chamber underneath, and that is the survival that earned Capel Lligwy its Grade II listing today. Through the medieval period and into the 18th century, the chapel served as a private chapel for nearby Lligwy House - a 'venerable mansion' owned first by the Lloyd family and then by William Irby, the 1st Baron Boston. After about 1720 the chapel fell out of use. The house has been gone for a century. The chapel still stands, roofless but recognisable.
The walls are built from local rubble masonry, and traces of plaster still cling to the interior. In the nave, a stone about two feet square with a hole bored through its top - possibly the base of a churchyard cross - lies where it has lain for centuries. The south chapel vault is reached by stone steps; the chamber itself is about 27 square feet. Just down the lane is the Lligwy Burial Chamber, a Neolithic dolmen whose capstone weighs 25 tons and was placed here some five thousand years ago. A few hundred metres beyond that is Din Lligwy, the 4th-century late-Roman defended enclosure. Three monuments from three completely different periods, all within easy walking distance - the Lligwy area is one of the densest concentrations of accessible ancient sites in Wales.
Capel Lligwy at 53.35°N, 4.26°W, on the gentle eastern slope above Lligwy Bay and Moelfre, eastern Anglesey. From low altitude the chapel itself is too small to see clearly, but the surrounding farmland - bordered by stone walls and laid out in the same field pattern as in medieval times - is unmistakable. Nearest airports: Anglesey/Valley (EGOV) 18 nm west, Caernarfon (EGCK) 16 nm south. The Snowdonia massif fills the southern horizon on clear days. Three other significant ancient sites - the Lligwy Burial Chamber, Din Lligwy, and Lligwy Bay itself - cluster within half a mile.