Amlwch Accommodation

More About Amlwch

Start at Amlwch Port, a remarkable little harbour hacked out of the solid rock to ship the ore. From accommodation in Amlwch you can visit the GeoMôn centre in the old Watch House. It tells the story of the port. Its lighthouse, restored in 2020, works again.

Accommodation in Amlwch is close to Our Lady Star of the Sea, up in the town. It was built between 1932 and 1937 in the shape of an upturned boat by an Italian engineer, Giuseppe Rinvolucri. The church closed in 2004 with the concrete failing and reopened after a restoration appeal in 2011.

How the harbour began

Before the copper, Amlwch harbour was barely a harbour at all. In the 1750s ships tied up to gorse bushes on the bank and paid the landowner in beer. Iron rings replaced the gorse in 1766, and the Parys Mining Company built the first pier in 1782. Around twenty thousand tons of rock were then blasted out to make the quay. The spoil went straight back into the walls.

At its height the port was extraordinary for a place this size. In the mid-1850s five hundred and sixteen ships used it in a single year. By 1883 the town had forty-three public houses. Then the trade fell away. Railway competition from 1865 cut the harbour dues by thirty per cent within five years. Dues are the fees ships paid to use the port. The harbour trustees were dissolved in 1913.

Today accommodation in Amlwch sits in a much quieter town. Above it, Parys Mountain has marked trails across its ochre-and-orange moonscape, a short way from accommodation in Amlwch. The Anglesey Coastal Path threads along the cliffs from the port to hidden coves on both sides. You can walk out as far as suits you.

It is a good base for the north of the island. From here you can reach Bull Bay, a mile along the coast. Cemaes and the northern tip are to the west. Benllech and Moelfre are down the east coast, and the middle of Anglesey is a short run inland.