Church of St John the Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist

This church is built of roughly coursed squared microgranite with gritstone dressings and slate roofs. It comprises a nave with a south porch, a short narrower presbytery, and large north and south transepts.

The exterior features double buttresses at the west end rising from a wide battered base to a gabled bellcote with three openings for bells. The south porch has an external arch of two chamfered orders and a coped gable with a cusped terminal stone. Nave buttresses have the lower offset rising from ground level. The windows include one- and two-light examples with cusped geometric tracery, varied at the west end where there is a higher two-light window. On the north side is a low west end window, partially blocked. Two-light windows serve the transepts and a large three-light window with elaborate tracery is positioned at the east end. All gables are coped.

Attached to the porch are slate headstones of Richard Williams, Cefn-y-maen (died 1747), Rebeccah Hughes (died 1860), Jane Morris (died 1860), Catherine Ellis and children (died 1805, in Latin), and Catherine Ellis of Gwynfryn (died 1736, buried 1803). In the churchyard stands a monument of 1781 to William Williams of the East India Company.

Interior

The wide nave has a slender trussed collar rafter roof. The truss at the junction of the nave with the transepts is arch-braced from low stone corbels, and each transept begins with a similar arch-braced collar truss, these together defining the crossing. The walls are plastered and painted, with a quarry tile floor, encaustic tiles in the crossing, and mosaic in the sanctuary.

The stone reredos has five bays on short trilobed red marble columns, each arch framing raised symbols of the faith. The pulpit is a carved limestone octagon raised over four steps with cinquefoil arches on similar short marble columns and panels filled with chequerwork; both the pulpit and reredos commemorate Samuel Owen Priestley (died 1872) and his wife. The font is a plain octagonal stone bowl with an oak cover. An oak lectern features carved openwork between side posts. The altar rail is also oak and arcaded. The organ, originally fitted with a barrel organ mechanism, was gifted to the church in 1867.

Stained Glass

The east window dates to circa 1862 and is in memory of Mary Nanney (died 1849) and her sister Anne Morgan. Two east nave windows show the Annunciation and the Good Shepherd, both good later nineteenth-century glass. The south transept window depicts the Baptism of Christ and dates to 1886, attributed to Mayrick of London. The west window shows Saints Peter and Paul and was created for Ellis Anwyl Owen, rector 1837–46.

Monuments

On the nave's north side from west to east: (a) A Gothic marble commemorative tablet on slate by R D Towyn to John Williams, surgeon, of Talarfor (died 1875); (b) A slate gravestone of Owen Gruffydd (died 1730), described as 'the most honourable of all', one of the last bards in the bardic tradition who wrote political and religious cywyddau and Christmas carols; (c) A Gothic white marble tablet with the outer edge carved with flowers and fruits by Hall of Derby to Samuel Owen Priestley of Trefan and Tyddynmadoc coch (died 1872); (d) A small slate tablet to Lieutenant Colonel Godfrey Drage of Cae Terfyn (died 1853), described as 'a gallant soldier'; (e) A marble tablet with cornice and urn over slate to John Wynne Hughes of Trefan (died 1795).

On the nave's south wall: (f) A marble tablet with cornice supporting a draped figure leaning on an upturned sword and holding a balance, to Henrietta Ellis Nanney of Gwynfryn (died 1815), and commemorating her husband David Ellis Nanney, barrister (died 1819); and (g) A polished limestone plaque to Dorothea Pughe-Jones of Ynysgain (died 1955).

Two unfixed boards are inscribed with the Commandments and the Creed.