A Church as Old as the Town
St Mary and St Nicholas Church, Beaumaris — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
The parish church of St Mary and St Nicholas was founded around 1330, within a generation of the town itself, originally as a chapel of ease to serve Edward I’s new borough. Today it is a Grade I listed building and one of the finest medieval churches on Anglesey.
Inside, look for the set of medieval misericords — the carved tip-up seats in the choir stalls, full of expressive faces and figures — among the best in North Wales. The church also houses the stone coffin traditionally associated with Princess Joan (Siwan), wife of Llywelyn the Great, moved here after the dissolution of Llanfaes Friary nearby.
Visiting
The church stands just off Castle Street in the centre of town, two minutes from the castle. It remains a working parish church in the Church in Wales, so opening for visitors fits around services; entry is free, with donations welcome. It pairs naturally with the Gaol and Courthouse and a stroll of the town centre’s Georgian streets.
For the wider story of the medieval borough — and what happened to the Welsh town of Llanfaes that Beaumaris displaced — see our History & Heritage guide.
The Misericords in Detail
The choir stalls’ carvings are 15th-century work, believed brought from Llanfaes Friary at its dissolution — which would make them survivors twice over. Tip the seats gently and a medieval world appears: faces, beasts and everyday scenes carved where only God and the choir would see them, which is precisely why the carvers enjoyed themselves. Together with Princess Joan’s coffin lid — a queenly effigy that spent centuries as a horse trough after the friary fell — the church holds more genuine medieval survival per square metre than anywhere else in town, castle included.
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