The Catholic diocese in this part of the world decided they wanted to improve education here, so they hunted around for an order of nuns who would be prepared to start a school.

They found the Bon Sauveur (good saviour) order based in France who were particularly interested in education and invited them over to Holyhead. Wales must have seemed like a bit of a missionary territory to them when they arrived in 1907.

The parish priest had worked hard finding a suitable site for the school, finally buying an old mill on the Ucheldre estate which had been put up for sale by Lord Stanley. This site near the top of town had been a very popular meeting place for the locals.

The school was first housed in the old Park House, which still stands next door to the Ucheldre Centre and is now used as sheltered housing.

When it first opened it was more of a girls' finishing school and proved to be so popular they began building and extending the old convent building to how it looked in 1989, before it was pulled down.

The school wasn't very expensive but was fee-paying, and girls would come from England, Scotland and Ireland, though very few from Anglesey. This changed as the middle/upper class grew in North Wales.

Also, the students weren't necessarily Catholic. They were educated in English and French - the 'must have' language if you were going to be seen to be an educated young lady.

It was closed as a school in 1983 because it had never really made a profit and was continually subsidised by the mother order in France.

Also, due to social changes such girls' schools became less popular and the numbers in the school began to fall - as well as those wanting to become nuns. Teachers from the order had to be replaced by lay staff, which cost money.

The final straw came when the building was found to be basically falling down. You could see all the way over to Bardsey from the top of the great tower, but it had just been bolted on to the main building and the soft stone was beginning to fall away in the Holyhead wind and rain. It wasn't safe.

When the school closed, we formed a committee and tried our best to save the building, but each time an interested buyer saw all the work that needed to be done they lost interest. The council bought it at a reduced price, sold it to a housing association and the building was demolished.

They did keep the convent chapel though. It was built in 1937 and was in very good condition. But the housing association couldn't decide what to do with it, so they gave it back to the council who called us up and said if we couldn't think of a use for it, it would be pulled down. So we re-formed the committee and decided to turn it into an arts centre - the Ucheldre.

Sixteen years on, we're still here, going strong. We hold exhibitions and concerts and were named the 'artistic lighthouse of North West Wales' - so South Stack isn't the only lighthouse for Holyhead!

Running an arts centre is a slog and we've come under threat of closure several times, but with a lot of hard work and fundraising, we keep going. We've managed to retain the atmosphere of the convent days - there's still a spiritual warmth here and we've put the old altar out in the garden.

The Bon Sauveur nuns are still here in Holyhead, too. When the school closed the five who were left bought a small house next to the Catholic church in Bryn Terrace.

By David Crystal, author of Convent and of The Story of Ucheldre, both available at the Ucheldre Centre.