Gwenfaen was a sixth-century Welsh saint, the daughter of a Brittonic chieftain named Paul Hen of Manaw -- Old Paulinus -- and sister to two more saints, Peulan and Gwyngeneu, who also settled on Holy Island. According to tradition she founded her church at Rhoscolyn around the year 630, on a cliff-top spot looking south across the bay. The present church is much later -- built in 1875 and enlarged with a chancel four years afterwards -- but the dedication is the original one. Inside, there is a fine copper memorial in Art Nouveau style to the Reverend John Hopkins, who served as Rector from 1876 until his death in 1901. Judge Edward Abbott Parry, a summer visitor who knew Hopkins well, wrote a ten-thousand-word appreciation of the man, full of anecdotes that capture the rhythm of rural life in late-Victorian Anglesey better than any official record. Hopkins was loved. The Art Nouveau plaque in his memory was paid for by his parishioners.

The village's southern edge runs along Borthwen -- a small enclosed bay bordered by a public beach, the kind of place that catches the warmest sun on the island. There was once a lifeboat station here, opened in 1830 and closed in 1929; a navigational beacon on Ynysoedd Gwylanod, the Gulls' Islands, replaced it. At the end of the eighteenth century, oysters were the local industry. The waters off Borthwen and out toward the Skerries were dredged so heavily that the beds collapsed by the 1820s and the industry never recovered. The pub is The White Eagle, the school is Ysgol Gynradd Santes Gwenfaen -- St Gwenfaen's Primary -- about a mile north of the village. The school's name keeps the saint's day alive among children who may not know what a holy well is.

The most significant lifeboat incident in Rhoscolyn's history began on 3 December 1920, when the small coaster Timbo, bound for Ireland out of Holyhead, was overtaken by a storm off South Stack and began to drift down the Welsh coast. The Rhoscolyn lifeboat went out into the gale, made several attempts to get a line aboard, and could not. The cox decided no more could be done and turned for home. Off Ynys Llanddwyn the lifeboat capsized. Five of her crew of thirteen were lost: Coxswain Owen Owens, age 61; Evan Hughes, 34; Richard Hughes, 17; Owen Jones, 38; William Thomas, 19. Four men from the Timbo died as well before that ship was finally beached at Dinas Dinlle. The memorial to the lifeboat men was unveiled in St Gwenfaen's churchyard on 12 November 1922. The station closed seven years later. The graves are still tended.

About a kilometre southwest of the village, in a cleft of rock above the cliffs of Porth Gwalch -- Hawk Bay -- lies St Gwenfaen's Well. It is medieval, possibly older, and contains a chamber with four stone seats in the corners. Traditional offerings were two white quartz pebbles thrown into the pool; the saint was said to cure mental illness, and the gift was a request for her intercession. The well is still blessed every year on or near her feast day, 4 November, after Holy Communion in the church above. The Anglesey Coastal Path, part of the Wales Coast Path, passes the well on its long looping route around the island. And on the same coast, an unexpected piece of Rhoscolyn trivia: Sir Edward Atholl Oakeley, the seventh Baronet of Shrewsbury, was born here in 1900 and grew up to become a professional wrestler and the founder of British All-In Wrestling -- the man who, more than any other, brought the sport into British public life under his ring name Atholl Oakeley.