St Tyfrydog's Church is situated in a wooded circular churchyard in the middle of the hamlet of
Llandyfrydog in
Anglesey, north Wales. It is about from the county town of
Llangefni. The 19th-century Anglesey antiquary
Angharad Llwyd wrote that a church was supposed to have been first built here around 450;
Samuel Lewis, writing in 1849, said that the original church was established by
Saint Tyfrydog himself. In his 1191
Itinerarium Cambriae ('Journey through Wales'),
Gerald of Wales mentioned the church, saying that when the Normans were ransacking Anglesey during a Welsh revolt led by
Gruffudd ap Cynan in 1098,
Hugh of Montgomery, one of the Norman lords, had kept his dogs in Llandyfydog church. He added that the dogs had gone mad by the morning, and the earl had been killed within a week. A church was recorded here in 1254 during the
Norwich Taxation, but the oldest part of the present building is the
nave dating from about 1400. The
chancel was rebuilt at the end of the 15th century or in the first part of the following century. Restoration work took place in 1823, and then again 1862, when the present porch (on the west end of the south wall) and the
vestry (to the north) were added, along with other alterations. The last service at the church was held on 22 November 2020. In 2025, it was vested to the
Friends of Friendless Churches by the Church in Wales. People associated with the church include the botanist
Hugh Davies, born in 1739 when his father Lewis was the rector;
Thomas Ellis Owen, rector from 1794, who wrote anti-Methodist pamphlets; and
James Henry Cotton (rector in 1814; appointed
Dean of
Bangor Cathedral in 1838). The priest and antiquary
Nicholas Owen was born in Llandyfrydog when his father was the rector (from 1750 to 1785). Owen petitioned, unsuccessfully, on three occasions to be given the
living, and he was eventually buried here. ==Architecture and fittings==