Our Lady Star of the Sea and St Winefride

Our Lady Star of the Sea and St Winefride — in Welsh, Mair, Seren y Môr a Santes Wenfrewi — is a Roman Catholic church at Amlwch, the old copper port on the north coast of Anglesey in north Wales, and one of the most astonishing church buildings in Britain: a 1930s structure of reinforced concrete, loosely in the shape of an upturned boat, designed by an Italian architect and described as "one of Britain's most avant-garde churches". It is a Grade II* listed building — "a remarkable inter-war church" built to "a highly unusual and experimental design" — and the Twentieth Century Society has called it "a rare and unique church".

The church stands on the A5025 about half a mile west of Amlwch, dedicated to St Mary under her title Our Lady, Star of the Sea — fitting for a port town — and to St Winefride, the seventh-century Welsh noblewoman also venerated at St Winefride's Well in Flintshire. Construction began in 1932 with the excavation of the foundations, and the church was completed and consecrated in 1937. Its architect was Giuseppe Rinvolucri, an Italian engineer from Piedmont who settled at Conwy in north Wales because his English wife was suffering from tuberculosis. His specialist field was the design of Roman Catholic churches, and other — more conventional — examples of his work survive at Abergele and Porthmadog; the Twentieth Century Society judges Amlwch "by far his best work".

Built of reinforced concrete, the church carries its nautical theme proudly: six concrete parabolic arch "ribs" sweep along the outside, with porthole windows in the base plinth between each rib — a deliberate reference to Amlwch's history as a port and its position on the coast (a similar structure exists in Lima, Peru, though it is not held to be an upturned boat). The main entrance, at the south end nearest the road where the concrete is dressed with stone, is reached by stone steps on either side, beneath a star-shaped window set in mosaic — every window in the church is star-shaped, for the Star of the Sea — and a stone cross tops the façade. Inside, the ribs remain visible, with patterns of lights and coloured marble panels on the lower walls between them; a vestry stands at the rear, a masonry parish hall is tucked underneath the church, and the porch houses a sepulchral slab from the latter half of the thirteenth century — a relic of Anglesey's medieval church carried into its most modern one. The altar was replaced in 1995 and again at the church's reopening in 2011, when a carved crucifix brought from a former convent in Liverpool was also dedicated.

Critics have struggled for comparisons. A 2009 guide to the buildings of north Wales calls it "a piece of Italian architectural daring" and asks, invoking the French concrete pioneer Eugène Freyssinet: "What inspired this Futurist church, closer to Freyssinet's 1920s airship hangars at Orly, Paris, than to Catholic church design, and so unlike the conservatism of Anglesey building?" Simon Jenkins noted the "sweeping parabolic arches, perhaps inspired by airship hangars or by upturned boats in Amlwch harbour" and the "bold gable with sloping sides", concluding flatly: "This church must be saved." A 2006 guide to Anglesey's churches calls it "a very impressive building" that "must surely be the most unusual church in Anglesey"; Cadw describes it as "striking and individual... a highly unusual and experimental design which exploits the plastic qualities of its constructional material to create a powerfully expressive religious building"; and one writer declared that "no Catholic church (nor any church of another denomination) built in Britain between the wars has the frankly radical character of Amlwch."

Jenkins's plea was almost necessary. Weather damage and deterioration of the concrete forced the church to close for worship in 2004, sending its congregation elsewhere on Anglesey, and by 2006 demolition was a real possibility. An appeal was launched to raise the estimated £1.2 to £1.4 million needed for repairs — replacing the roof coverings, redecorating inside and out, repairing the steps. The campaign had setbacks: an application for an £840,000 Heritage Lottery Fund grant was rejected in March 2009, the committee deeming a proposed new extension "inappropriate" while acknowledging the scheme's "high heritage merit". But Cadw granted £150,000 in 2007, the National Churches Trust £10,000 in 2010, and other bodies and individuals gave generously. The church reopened after restoration on 1 May 2011, with a Mass celebrated by the Bishop of Wrexham, Edwin Regan. It serves today within the Caernarfon Deanery of the Diocese of Wrexham, in the parish of Amlwch and Benllech, which also includes Our Lady of Lourdes at Benllech.

The church's fame keeps growing: it is the starting point of "Here We Are", a short film by the Turner Prize-winning artist Elizabeth Price created for the 2025 Liverpool Biennial, which explores the inspiration for the church's architecture and traces the modernist Catholic churches that followed it. Nearly ninety years after Rinvolucri raised his concrete boat above the Irish Sea, the Star of the Sea still rides upturned on the Anglesey coast — saved, restored, and recognised at last as the masterpiece it always was.