Church of St Michael

Church of St Michael

This is a simple cruciform church built in roughcast rubblestone with ashlar window tracery and slate roofs with coped verges. The church displays a mix of medieval structural elements and Victorian fittings, reflecting its long history of adaptation and restoration.

The nave features two-light bar tracery windows with hoodmoulds and quoins on both south and north walls. A gabled porch with slit windows and a boarded door (dating from 1985) stands on the north wall to the east. Above the west wall rises a gabled bellcote containing a single bell inscribed "GRIFFITH WILLIAMS WILLIAM HOWELL WARDENS 1767". The roof includes one 20th-century rooflight on the south slope and two on the north, and is half-hipped where it meets the transepts. The transepts contain similar windows to those in the nave but taller, with more elongated quatrefoils to their heads.

The chancel has a broad lancet with trefoil head on the north wall, and an even broader east window with quoins and hoodmould. A lean-to vestry on the south has a blocked doorway to the east and a blocked rectangular window to the south.

The main architectural feature is the fine arch-braced roof to the nave, comprising four collar trusses with chamfered soffits. The foot of the second truss from the west is carved with a face on the south side. The fourth truss from the west is a single hammerbeam type, consisting of a chamfered and stopped four-centred arch on moulded beams with moulded bases to wall-posts sitting on rough stone corbels. Above the collar are two struts forming a quatrefoil flanked by trefoils. The whole of this truss has been renewed above the wall beams. Replacement double-purlins and rafters run throughout the nave. The chancel contains two arch-braced trusses similar to those in the nave, with further single trusses reused in the transepts (the south transept truss is renewed). The presence of these trusses in the transepts suggests the chancel originally extended as far as the west side of the transepts. Replacement double-purlins and rafters have been installed throughout, except in the north transept where the purlins are original.

The north doorway has a plain square-headed opening containing a probably 17th-century elliptical-arched frame and a Victorian door.

All the fittings and furnishings are late Victorian in date. Pews are raked at the west end and face southwards to form choirstalls in the north transept. A reading desk and pulpit are present, the latter bearing the wheatsheaf emblem and "DEO FAVENTE" motto of Duncan Alves, owner of Bryn Bras Castle from 1920 to 1940. A low iron screen stands at the west end of the chancel, with a brass altar rail beyond. Three iron and brass candelabra for oil lamps hang from the nave roof, and similar sconces bearing the "IHC" monogram are mounted at the west end of the chancel.

Stained glass fills all windows. The east window is in memory of Revd. James Parry (died 1899). The south transept window commemorates Hugh Barrow Rowlands, killed in 1903 in Somaliland. The north transept window dates to around 1903 and is in memory of members of the Ower and Pritchard families. The nave north window commemorates Elizabeth (died 1885) and William Jones (died 1902), while the south window honours Ellen Jane Prichard (died 1889).

The church contains several monuments and memorials. A First World War memorial occupies the south wall of the nave, with a tablet to Kelyth Pierce Lloyd Williams, killed in action in 1916, alongside it. A Second World War memorial stands in the porch. An early 19th-century brass wall tablet to members of the Rowlands family is in the south transept, along with a brass plate to Hugh Barrow Rowlands and a larger brass tablet erected by the parishioners of Llanrug, officers of the Suffolk Regiment and friends. Floor slabs at the east end of the nave record Jane Rowlands (died 1729), William Rowlands (died 1740) and John Rowlands (died 1762), the latter two noted as of Plastirion. Slate tablets on the west wall of the vestry record Owen Thomas of Glyn Ifor (died 1762), who left £5 to the poor of the parish with which a house was built "for their use" at Bryn Crwn, and John Jones of Bryn y Fedwan (died 1781), who left £5 to buy white bread for the poor of the parish (the latter inscription being in Welsh).