This small offshore island (though allegedly Wales' fourth largest), 2¾×1 km wide with an area of 180 ha, lies 3.1 km off the tip of Llŷn, reaching 167 m asl at Mynydd Enlli with a low plain to the west. The Welsh name, Ynys Enlli, 'island of the tides/in the currents' is apt, considering the powerful twice-daily circulation of water past the tip of the Peninsula. In English, Bardsey is fancifully said to mean 'Island of the Bards', but that's probably an over-romantic reference to druidism, poorly supported by documented history, and the name's more likely to be Norse: 'Barda-øy' would be 'Barda's Island'.
This is one of many claimants to be the legendary burial site of King Arthur, tenuously supported by the presence of a unique species of apple, Y Afal Enlli, growing on the sole surviving tree of a c.6th Century monastic orchard: modern Welsh 'Ynys Afalon', or 'Isle of Apples', could be easily identified as the Arthurian 'Avalon'. Not that Bardsey is actually called 'Ynys Afalon'; I tend to consider the Arthurian reference to be an understandably wishful response to the island's dramatic setting.
More verifiably, Bardsey has been a hugely important destination of christian pilgrimages since the foundation of St Mary's Abbey by the Celtic St Cadfan in 516. St Deiniol (founding bishop of Bangor) and St Dyfrig (aka Dubricius, who retired here), amongst many venerable early monks, were buried on the island, and in the mediæval era three pilgrimages to the 'island of 20,000 saints' (though consider the logistics of that many burials...) were considered as beneficial as one to Rome. The abbey, by then Augustinian, was demolished in the 1537 Dissolution, leaving only the 13th century bell tower, but pilgrims still make the journey.
The current settlement pattern of the island dates from the 1870s, when Lord Newborough built new houses (and a methodist chapel instead of a new harbour, at the residents' request) for his tenants. The population was 132 in 1881, but that dropped to ~100 by 1900 and a majority of residents moved ashore in 1925 for an easier life. Others moved in, but the 1961 census found only 17 residents remaining; by 2003, there were four.
Though the island's school closed in 1953, a bird observatory opened in the same year, an early indication of a shift in Bardsey's significance, from farming to nature conservation. Located on migration routes and undisturbed by modern agriculture, the island is a National Nature Reserve, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and part of Glannau Aberdaron ac Ynys Enlli Special Protection Area. Alongside rare maritime bryophytes and lichens, 10-16,000 Manx shearwater breed on the island, as do ~200 grey seals, producing ~15 pups each year.
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