Church of St Llechid

Church of St Llechid

A Grade II listed church in loosely Lombardic Romanesque style, comprising a nave, chancel, west bellcote, south porch and north vestry. The building is constructed from roughly coursed rubblestone blocks with tooled ashlar dressings, featuring a continuous chamfered plinth and cill band. The roofs are steeply pitched slate with coped verges and strong moulded cornices.

The nave is buttressed in 5 bays with round-arched windows to the 4 eastern bays on the north side and 3 eastern bays on the south side. The windows have carved capitals to recessed heads. An octagonal chimney stack with scalloped top projects from the east gable.

The west wall contains a projecting stepped bellcote housing a single bell dated 1752. The bellcote has a broad recessed round-headed window to the ground stage flanked by narrower recessed round-headed windows, and a 4-light window above with crude intersecting lancet tracery under a square-headed canopy with a blind rectangular slit above.

The short chancel features nook-shafts to prominent corner buttresses and a round-headed east window with intersecting lancet tracery in 3 lights. A small narrow round-headed window above contains a plain cross to the gable. A small projection on the south side provides access to the pulpit. The lean-to north vestry in the angle with the nave has a late 20th-century panelled door approached by straight-flight steps on the north and a recessed round-headed window to the east.

The wide gabled south porch at the west end of the nave has a plain cross to the apex and narrow chamfered rectangular windows to the sides. Its outer arch is round-headed in 3 orders, with the inner arch simply carved capitals. Double doors are inscribed with the date "MDCCCXLIV" above and feature an elaborate ironwork tympanum. A buttress immediately to the east of the porch is carried up as a chimney. Straight-flight steps to the west lead down to round-headed archways in the south wall of the nave and west wall of the porch, which gives access to a boiler house.

The interior is largely unaltered and has an almost basilican character. The wide aisleless nave has an arch-braced roof in 5 bays with intermediary trusses. The principal trusses rest on curious and substantial cushion-like stone corbels. The west wall is of painted brick, in front of which is a panelled west gallery supported on 2 circular columns with block capitals to the centre and plain responds at the sides. An elegant, gently sweeping staircase against the west wall has tapering circular newels and slender octagonal balusters to carved treads.

The round-headed chancel arch is in 2 orders with scalloped capitals to half-octagonal responds. Beyond the arch are 3 steps with a further 2 steps to the sanctuary. Both the chancel and sanctuary have encaustic tiled floors.

The fittings and furnishings include a complete set of early Victorian pews to the nave. A hexagonal neo-Norman polished slate pulpit on a slender pedestal is decorated with emblems of the 4 evangelists in sunken round-arched panels. It is approached through a round-headed doorway in the south wall of the chancel and another in the east wall of the nave. There is a recut octagonal font with an 18th-century cover, an eagle lectern on a circular shaft with cable decoration, and altar rails with intersecting Norman tracery and blind round-headed arcading, with similar timber work as a reredos. The Victorian stained glass east window is flanked by painted round-arched panels inscribed with the Creed and Ten Commandments in Welsh.

Monuments include a wall tablet on the nave south wall commemorating Elisa Wynn Coytmor (died 1808), buried in the Grosvenor Chapel of St George's Church, Hanover Square, London, erected by her husband, Revd. William Wynn Coytmor. A plain tablet on the north wall commemorates Richard Morris Griffith (died 1845). A First World War memorial also appears on this wall.