Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/139

Rh stone-vaulting are to be found at Penmôn and Ynys Seiriol. Here the towers of the two churches are covered with low conical quadrilateral spires, or rather pointed roofs, in the formation of which no wood is employed, but the stones keep lapping over each other from the lowest course laid on the side walls until at length they meet in the apex. A much later example of this rude vaulting, if it can be so called, is in the monastic pigeon-house at Penmôn, a curious square building of the fifteenth century, almost unique in its kind:—the towers above mentioned are about sixteen feet square at Penmôn, and eighteen feet by twelve feet at Ynys Seiriol, but in the pigeon-house the area is twenty-one feet square, and the quadrilateral vaulting approaches to the domical form (like the roofs used by Delorme in the Tuileries, and other French châteaux), and it is entirely covered by stones laid in this manner, without any wood in the whole building, and with a light louvre or lantern in the midst.

Towers were evidently too costly for the construction of the primitive churches of Anglesey, and whenever bells came to be used, the erection of a simple gable at the western end of the building served the purpose. All these gables however have pointed arches, either of the end of the thirteenth or the fourteenth centuries; and hence it may be suspected that the use of bells was an ecclesiastical luxury of comparatively late introduction into Anglesey. However this may be, their form is very simple: covered generally with a straight coping, but at Llansadwrn with one of a peculiarly elegant curve. At Penmynydd (which is the largest church in the commot next to St. Mary's at Beaumarais) the gable is pierced for two bells; but this is a rare instance of parochial wealth.

The churchyards retain perhaps the same size and form which they originally possessed: a fact which, in the absence of documentary evidence, may be inferred from the peculiarly religious spirit of the inhabitants, who still retain in undiminished vigour the national respect for sacred things: and which has never allowed them, except in the calamitous period of the dissolution of the monasteries, to encroach on consecrated ground. The absence of monumental slabs would lead to the inference that no interments (as a general rule) took place within the churches. There are exceptions to this at Penmynydd, where the tomb and vault of the Tudor family still remain, and where there is also a tomb under an arch in the