Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/59

Rh the result of his observations as far as they have yet been carried.

The isle of Anglesey has always been a district of great simplicity and comparative poverty, notwithstanding that its soil is by no means unfruitful, and that its mineral riches are of high value. Still, not being the seat of any manufacturing population (at any period that we know of), and the attention of its inhabitants being exclusively directed to agricultural occupations, it has never seen the wealth of great feudal landlords spent in adorning its villages or towns,—and it has not been devastated by the hand of modern vandalism. Anglesey remains nearly what it was some hundreds of years ago; the manners of the people are very simple and primitive; its ecclesiastical buildings have never been improved; they have been allowed to decay more or less, but they have not been so much injured by this neglect as they would have been by positive interference in days of archæological darkness. On the one hand, therefore, while we are not to expect to find any buildings of importance or even of magnitude (with one exception—King Edward's castle at Beaumarais), so, on the other, we may expect to find the Medieval remains less injured than in other parts of the country, a circumstance which, with one or two exceptions, (such as the friary of Llanvaes, destroyed soon after the Reformation, and an abbey near Aberffraw, also destroyed), is found universally to prevail. Much therefore may be learnt of village ecclesiastical architecture in Anglesey, but very little of what would adorn a town.

The total number of the parochial churches in the island is seventy-four, nearly all of very early date in their principal parts: rude in form and small in size: often badly constructed: many barely adequate to the accommodation of a slowly increasing population: nearly all of them untouched by modern hands. Every parish in Anglesey bears the name of its patron saint, or else of the holy man who first introduced Christianity, and built a place of worship in it: this is common indeed throughout Wales; but it is peculiarly so in Anglesey, and is of great value to whoever searches into the history of the district.

The common form of the Anglesey village church is cruciform, always built with strict attention to the orientation of the edifice: small in size, being commonly from thirty to sixty feet in extreme length: low in height, the gable seldom