Qualla: Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan

Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Talsarnau Times, CC BY-SA 3.0. Gerald of Wales, the great 12th-century traveller and chronicler, recorded a peculiar story about the church at Llanidan. There was a stone carving here, he said, in the shape of a human thigh, that would always return to the church by the next morning no matter how far away it was taken. A Norman earl, sceptical, had chained it to a large rock and thrown it into the sea. By dawn the stone was back. Whether you believe the story or not, the church Gerald wrote about is now itself almost a ruin - dismantled in the 1840s in a decision one Victorian antiquarian denounced as a melancholy fate. What survives is strange and beautiful: a roofless arcade of six arches standing in a graveyard, framing a vanished interior.

Image: Talsarnau Times | CC BY-SA 3.0

Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan: St Nidan's First Church

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Linwood, CC BY 2.0. The tradition recorded by a 2009 survey of north-west Wales's buildings holds that the first church on this site was founded in 616, by Saint Nidan himself. Nidan was the confessor of the monastery at Penmon, on the eastern tip of Anglesey - a community founded by Saint Seiriol t...

Image: Jim Linwood | CC BY 2.0

Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan: The Twin Naves

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Williams, CC BY-SA 2.0. Around the year 1500 the church was substantially enlarged. A south porch was added, and a second nave was built on the north side of the original one. Between the two naves an arcade of six arches was constructed, dividing yet uniting the two spaces. Whether this enlargement was...

Image: Nigel Williams | CC BY-SA 2.0

Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan: A Melancholy Fate

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bencherlite, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the early 19th century the old church was in poor repair, and Brynsiencyn village was a longer walk from worship than felt right. Between 1839 and 1843 a new church was built nearby to serve the parish. Then most of the old building was deliberately taken down, leaving only pa...

Image: Bencherlite | CC BY-SA 3.0

Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan: What Stands Now

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bencherlite, CC BY-SA 3.0. The result is one of the most haunting ecclesiastical sites in Anglesey. The arcade of six pointed arches rises from the graveyard with nothing left to support but air. The roof is gone. Most of the walls are gone. The font and the relic chest have been moved to the working churc...

Image: Bencherlite | CC BY-SA 3.0