page_title: St Nidan's Church, Llanidan
section_title: Assessment
hierarchical_section_title: St Nidan's Church, Llanidan / Assessment
caption_attribution_description: English: Church at Brynsiencyn
context_page_description: St Nidan's Church, Llanidan is a 19th-century parish church near the village of Brynsiencyn, in Anglesey, north Wales. Built between 1839 and 1843, it replaced the Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan, which needed significant repair, providing a place of Anglican worship nearer to the village than the old church. Some items were moved here from the old church, including the 13th-century font, two bells from the 14th and 15th century, and a reliquary thought to hold the remains of St Nidan. The tower at the west end has been described as "top heavy" and looking like "a water tower".
  The church is still used for worship by the Church in Wales, one of five in a group of parishes in the south of Anglesey. It is a Grade II listed building, a national designation given to "buildings of special interest, which warrant every effort being made to preserve them", in particular because it is regarded as "a distinctive example of pre-archaeological gothic revival work." The 19th-century clergyman and antiquarian Harry Longueville Jones said that it had been built in a "debased barbarous style, showing neither architectural science nor taste".
context_section_description: The church has national recognition and statutory protection from alteration as it has been designated as a Grade II listed building – the lowest of the three grades of listing, designating "buildings of special interest, which warrant every effort being made to preserve them". It was given this status on 30 January 1968, and has been listed as "a small early 19th-century church". Cadw (the Welsh Assembly Government body responsible for the built heritage of Wales and the inclusion of Welsh buildings on the statutory lists) describes the church as "a distinctive example of pre-archaeological gothic revival work."
  Writing in 1846, the clergyman and antiquarian Harry Longueville Jones condemned the treatment of the old church, which he said was "one of the largest and most important in the island of Anglesey", given its architecture, contents and traditions. He said that the new church had been built "in a debased barbarous style, showing neither architectural science nor taste, and without any example or analogy amongst the ecclesiastical edifices of any age, except the present." He also described it in 1863 as "that hideous pile ... a painfully impressive example of architectural bad taste." He said that the font was "one of the most interesting as a work of art (not later than the thirteenth century) extent in Anglesey", and although he did not consider that its design or execution matched that of the font at St Ceinwen's Church, Llangeinwen, it was "a highly valuable specimen of medieval taste." The reliquary, he added, was "unique, so far as Wales is concerned".
  The 19th-century writer Samuel Lewis said that the new church was "apparently of substantial construction, but is much inferior in style to the old building." The historian and clergyman Edmund Tyrrell Green, writing a survey of Anglesey church architecture and contents in 1929, described the church as "hideous", although he said that the font was "remarkable" for its "very graceful patterns in relief showing influence of Greek classical design."
  A 2006 guide to the churches of Anglesey says that it is "of fairly unusual appearance, not at all typical of Anglesey churches in its stonework or the shape of the castelled tower".  It comments that the organ and vestry were in "unusually-shaped rooms", and notes the "ornate stained glass" of the Ascension. A 2009 guide to the buildings of the region says that the church is "bolder" than John Welch's similarly designed church at Llandudno. It describes the tower as "top-heavy with battlements... like a water tower", and adds that the seating is "crowded".
caption: The tower at the west end of the church
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