Qualla: St Hywyn's Church, Aberdaron

St Hywyn's Church, Aberdaron: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It almost falls into the sea. The Church of St Hywyn stands so close to Aberdaron Bay that on stormy days the waves come up the churchyard wall, and twice in its long history the building has been threatened by coastal erosion that forced repairs. The position is not an accident. This church was the embarkation point - the building where medieval pilgrims came before crossing the dangerous waters of Bardsey Sound to reach Ynys Enlli, the holy island. The Great Kitchen next door, Y Gegin Fawr, fed them while they waited for the weather. Some waited a day. Some waited weeks. After 1119, when Pope Callixtus II declared three pilgrimages to Bardsey equivalent to one to Rome, the queue grew long.

St Hywyn's Church, Aberdaron: Origins in the Dark Ages

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The site is older than the present building. A clas settlement - a community of Celtic Christian monks - was established here in the 5th to 7th centuries by St Hywyn, an early Welsh saint who had come from Brittany. The clas would have been a wooden enclosure with a small stone c...

St Hywyn's Church, Aberdaron: Two Naves

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The most striking architectural feature of St Hywyn's is that it has two naves of equal length, joined by an internal arcade. The northern nave is largely 12th-century. The southern nave was added in the 14th or 15th century, almost certainly to accommodate the increasing flow of...

St Hywyn's Church, Aberdaron: Decline and Restoration

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Reformation in the 16th century was the beginning of a long decline for the church. Pilgrimages stopped. The Catholic infrastructure that had supported the abbey on Bardsey was dismantled by Henry VIII's commissioners in 1537. St Hywyn's lost its purpose as a pilgrim staging-...

St Hywyn's Church, Aberdaron: R.S. Thomas

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

From 1967 to 1978, the vicar of St Hywyn's was R.S. Thomas - one of the great Welsh poets of the 20th century. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. He had learned Welsh as an adult and become an ardent Welsh nationalist. His poetry, which a number of critic...