Llanykil, 2017

It is only a very short drive from Bala High Street to the Llanykil Church, which now hosts an exhibition devoted to the story of Mary Jones, who saved for six years to buy a copy of the Bible in Welsh. Once she had the money, she walked twenty-six miles from her home in Llanhihangel-y-Pennant to Bala to purchase her book, a feat still commemorated today, and giving some insight to the marriage of religion and nationalism in Wales, and the mileage that becoming printers and bookbinders in the Bible-mad Wales of the time would have had.

In the quiet graveyard outside, numerous Owens and Jones and Davies and Williams’ sleep on, as indeed they seem to do all over Wales. The introduction of surnames by the Normans was supposed to enable the authorities to distinguish between individuals and families. Either the Welsh did not get the message, or they chose to gently subvert it, by adopting surnames from such a small pool that nobody would ever be the wiser regarding their origins. The village itself sits above the church on the hillside, looking down over Lake Bala.

Llanykil Churchyard