The Church of St Elvis

Regular readers of Chad Taylor will be aware of his recent novel The Church of John Coltrane and that there is such a church in San Francisco, the Saint John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church at 1286 Fillmore Street.

It came as news to me, via Rory Sutherland’s Wiki Man column in this week’s Spectator, that there is a Church of Saint Elvis, on the Pembroke coast in South Wales. It seems to have been built in 1784 and was a ruin by 1990.

Saint Elvis did exist: he was an Irish bishop in the sixth century. Elvis is the anglicised form of the saint’s name: he was known as Ailbe of Emly, also as Aelfyw, and in Latin as Albeus. But let’s remember him this way.