St Gallgo's Church, Llanallgo

The churchyard contains 140 victims of the sinking of the Royal Charter off Anglesey in October 1859, and an obelisk commemorates the loss.^[1] Over 440 passengers and crew died.^[10] Stephen Roose Hughes was the rector at the time of the accident.^[1] St Gallgo's was used as a temporary mortuary as bodies were recovered from the sea.^[11] Hughes and his brother Hugh, who was rector of an adjoining parish, conducted many of the funeral services. Hughes wrote over 1,000 letters to people enquiring for news of relatives and friends, and comforted many who visited Anglesey. Charles Dickens stayed with Hughes when he visited Anglesey to write about the sinking; his experiences were published in The Uncommercial Traveller. He recorded the care that Hughes took to try and identify victims from their possessions and physical characteristics.^[11] Hughes died three years later; the strain of the events was noted on his gravestone in the churchyard as one of the reasons for his early death. He is remembered in St Gallgo's on the anniversary of his death, 4 February.^[11] The churchyard also contains two Commonwealth war graves, of a Royal Engineers soldier of World War I and a Merchant Navy sailor of World War II.^[12]

The poet Dafydd Trefor is recorded in a list of clergy for the Bangor diocese of 1504 as being rector of St Gallgo's and St Eugrad's, and signed himself as such in a deed of 1524; he was buried in the churchyard.^[13] The poet and historian John Williams (better known by his bardic name "Glanmor") was rector of the two churches from 1883 until his death in 1891; he too is buried at Llanallgo.^[14]

St Gallgo's is still used for worship by the

The church is built in the

The chancel measures 12 by 12 feet 6 inches (3.65 by 3.8m); the north transept is 17 by 14 feet 6 inches (5.2 by 4.4m); the south transept is slightly smaller, at 17 by 14 feet (5.2 by 4.25m); and the nave after its 1892 extension is now twice as long as the chancel, at 24 by 12 feet (7.3 by 3.7 m).[4]

Assessment

The church has national recognition and statutory protection from alteration as it has been designated as a Grade II

Angharad Llwyd, writing shortly after the 1831 restoration, described the church as "a small and handsome structure", and she recorded the presence of some "ancient" stained glass in the east window.[6] Writing in 1859, the clergyman and antiquarian Harry Longueville Jones said that the church, although small, was one of the "better kind" in Anglesey.^[18] He thought that the walls had been lowered after being built, because the top of the east window was too close to the roof, which in his view could not have been the original intention. At the time he wrote there were the remains of a screen between the nave and the chancel, but it is no longer present. Overall, he commented, "the workmanship of this church is more careful than usual, and shows that it was erected by some person of munificent disposition".^[18]

The Welsh politician and church historian Sir Stephen Glynne visited the church in 1868, and noted that the church had been altered less than most of the other churches in Anglesey. He thought that the west window was "modern and bad", but that the east window of the chancel was "very good".^[19] He added that the church needed repair, as the interior was "very rough".^[19]

References