Bangor Cathedral features on Royal Mail Christmas stamp

In ad 525, St Deiniol set up a missionary community enclosed by a bangor, or hazel fence, in a low-lying spot on the Menai Strait between the mountains of Snowdonia and the shores of Anglesey. Deiniol was one of the 6th-century Celtic saints who, after the departure of the Romans from Britain, sustained a Christian presence along the western shores of Wales. In the ensuing years, the monastery was plundered several times; nothing of the original building survives.