Qualla: St Eleth's Church, Amlwch

St Eleth's Church, Amlwch: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Most of the village's wealth, in 1768, was the herring it could catch and sell. Then someone broke ground at Parys Mountain, two miles inland, and within a generation Amlwch was the biggest copper-mining town in the world. The harbour filled with sailing ships. The hillside filled with workers' cottages. The medieval church in the centre of the village was suddenly far too small for the people pouring into it on Sundays, and Thomas Williams — the man known as 'the Copper King', because the price of copper in Europe was set by what he chose to charge — opened his purse and offered six hundred pounds for a new one. St Eleth's, completed in 1800, is what that money built.

St Eleth's Church, Amlwch: Six Centuries of Church on One Hill

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

There has been a Christian site here since the sixth century, when the place is said to have been founded by St Elaeth — a saint about whom early Welsh tradition is generous and modern history is cautious. The medieval church that preceded the present building was small, low, and...

St Eleth's Church, Amlwch: Neo-classical on the Welsh Coast

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Most Anglesey churches are small, low, medieval, and built of rubble masonry. St Eleth's is none of those things. It is a tall, dignified, Neo-classical building set back from the east side of Queen Street, with an impressive tower and an interior that retains, in the words of a ...

St Eleth's Church, Amlwch: The Copper King

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Thomas Williams of Llanidan deserves a paragraph of his own. A solicitor by training, born on Anglesey in 1737, he ended up controlling effectively the entire British copper industry for a generation. He sat in Parliament. He banked. He sheathed the bottoms of Royal Navy warships...

St Eleth's Church, Amlwch: The Town That Grew Around It

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Amlwch at the height of the copper boom had a population of perhaps six thousand — more than Bangor or Caernarfon — and a port at Porth Amlwch dug out by hand from the rock to handle the ore ships. The mountain itself was stripped of vegetation, riddled with adits, and dyed yello...