St Enghenedl's Church, Llanynghenedl

St Enghenedl’s Church once stood in the small village of Llanynghenedl on Anglesey’s north-west coast, about six and a half kilometres east of Holyhead. The first church was built around 620, according to the 19th-century antiquarian Angharad Llwyd, and the present building dated in part from the late 13th or early 14th century. Its south doorway still showed the carved decorations noted by the clergyman and antiquarian Harry Longueville Jones. The church was dedicated to Enghenedl, a son of a 6th-century King of Powys, though little else is known of the saint. The village name itself comes from the Welsh word for church, llan, joined to a form of the saint’s name.

The church declined as the nearby village of Valley grew and a new church was built there. In 1988 it was dismantled and rebuilt as an extension to St Mihangel’s Church in Llanfihangel yn Nhowyn to serve the Royal Air Force base at Valley. The architect Henry Kennedy, who designed both churches in 1862, planned the rebuilding so that the west end of St Enghenedl’s now joins the west end of St Mihangel’s. The old east window faces west, and the bellcote sits in the middle of the roof.

Visitors can still see the overgrown former churchyard with its gravestones and lychgate in their original place. The old east window and bellcote remain visible on the rebuilt church, and the 12th-century font, once inside St Enghenedl’s, now stands in the south chapel of St Cybi’s Church in Holyhead. A silver chalice from 1724–25, bearing the names of the vicar and churchwardens, is recorded in the Bangor diocese. The quiet surroundings and the re-erected fragments give a sense of the church’s long history on this stretch of Anglesey.