page_title: Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan
section_title: Structure
hierarchical_section_title: Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan / Architecture and fittings / Structure
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior shot of Llanidan old church
context_page_description: The Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan is a medieval church in the community of Llanidan, in Anglesey, North Wales, close to the Menai Strait. The first church on the site was established in the 7th century by St Nidan, the confessor of the monastery at Penmon, Anglesey, but the oldest parts of the present structure, are now closed and partly ruined, date from the 14th century. In about 1500 the church was enlarged by the addition of a second nave on the north side, separated from the earlier nave by an arcade of six arches. During 1839 till 1843 a new church was built nearby to serve the local community, partly due to the cost of repairing the old church. Much of the building was subsequently demolished, leaving only part of the western end and the central arcade. The decision was condemned at the time by Harry Longueville Jones, a clergyman and antiquarian, who lamented the "melancholy fate" of what he called "one of the largest and most important [churches] in the island of Anglesey". Other appreciative comments have been made about the church both before and after its partial demolition.
context_section_description: St Nidan's has two naves or aisles divided by a central arcade, and a porch in the south-west corner.  It is 38 feet (11.6 m) wide, the northern nave being about 3 feet (0.91 m) wider than the other.  Before the church's partial demolition, the church was 78 feet (23.8 m) long and had a chapel, 12 by 19 feet (3.7 by 5.8 m), on the south side. The walls, about 2 feet 10 inches (0.86 m) thick, are built from local rubble masonry with a covering of sandstone. The present wall at the east end was added after the rest of the church was demolished. The western wall has been rebuilt and buttresses added to the south side and north-west corner to help support the structure; Jones thought that they dated from the 16th century.  The roof above the remaining western section is made from slates. At the top of the west end of the roof above the south aisle, there is a stone bellcote with two bells.
  The south porch contains a water stoup that was said miraculously never to dry up; the water was traditionally regarded as having healing powers. There is a second entrance on the north side through a 15th-century arched doorway decorated with carved human heads. Two verses from Psalm 84 (in Welsh) are written on the wall above the doorway: "For one day in thy Courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of ungodliness." These are the only surviving portions of the Biblical texts that once decorated the internal walls.
  The north wall has a window with two lights (sections of window separated by mullions) topped with trefoils (a pattern of three overlapping circles).  The two arched east windows, one in each aisle, are decorated with tracery; the southern window reuses some tracery from the 15th century. The demolished southern chapel had a two-light window similar to that at St Peter's, Newborough, which Jones considered to be of "very rude workmanship", and three-light square-headed windows in the east and west walls. Jones also noted the loss of the original window at the end of the northern aisle, which was from the 14th century in his view, and some windows in the north wall "of excellent workmanship".  The southern aisle, he said, had had "a small circular headed window, filled up from a pointed one" at the eastern end; the east window "was of a design more remarkable for its singularity than its beauty."
  Two of the six arches in the arcade are inside the church; the other four project beyond the east wall, which has been built around one of the octagonal piers that support the arches.  The roof dates from the 15th century, although the visible beams are not original; the roof's exposed wooden trusses rest on sandstone corbels. A 1937 survey by the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire noted 20 memorials from the 17th and 18th centuries. It also recorded the presence of a sundial on a pedestal, dated 1768, and some stone shields that were not attached to the building, bearing dates of 1561 and 1563. Most of the fittings now in St Nidan's are not original, and come from other churches in north-west Wales; the granite altar is modern.
caption: The east window of the southern aisle, which reuses some 15th-century tracery, and the exposed woodwork of the roof
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