Cribinau
Encyclopedia
Tidal island
A tidal island is a piece of land that is connected to the mainland by a natural or man-made causeway that is exposed at low tide and submerged at high tide. Because of the mystique surrounding tidal islands many of them have been sites of religious worship, such as Mont Saint Michel with its...
off the south west coast of the isle of Anglesey
Anglesey
Anglesey , also known by its Welsh name Ynys Môn , is an island and, as Isle of Anglesey, a county off the north west coast of Wales...
in Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
between Porth China and Porth Cwyfan. The nearest village is Aberffraw
Aberffraw
Aberffraw is a small village and community on the south west coast of the Isle of Anglesey , in Wales, by the west bank of the River Ffraw, at . The UK postcode begins LL63. Access by road is by way of the A4080 and the nearest rail station is Bodorgan. In the early Middle Ages Aberffraw was the...
. The island, which can be reached on foot at low tide, is notable for the 13th-century church of St Cwyfan, known locally as eglwys bach y mor (the little church in the sea) or simply as Cwyfan. The church remains in use and is popular for weddings and christenings.
Seventeenth-century maps show the church standing on the mainland of Anglesey but erosion by the sea of the boulder clay
Boulder clay
Boulder clay, in geology, is a deposit of clay, often full of boulders, which is formed in and beneath glaciers and ice-sheets wherever they are found, but is in a special sense the typical deposit of the Glacial Period in northern Europe and North America...
cliffs has created the island. To prevent the church falling into the sea, a protective wall was built in the nineteenth century around the island.