Church of St Tegai

Church of St Tegai

A cruciform parish church comprising a nave, chancel, central tower, transepts, north vestry and west porch. The building is constructed of roughly coursed rubblestone for the nave, chancel and transepts, with ashlar to the parapets concealing shallow-pitched lead roofs, and rock-faced ashlar to the tower.

The nave is buttressed in two bays and features mid-19th century three-light windows with panel tracery on both north and south elevations; those to the west have hoodmoulds. On the north side there is a small rectangular window lighting a gallery at the west end. The nave has embattled parapets, as does the west porch, which is entered through a pointed and nook-shafted outer doorway with quatrefoils and trefoils to the spandrels of a square label. The porch has single-light trefoil-headed windows to the sides and a pointed inner doorway with Decorated-style tracery to the door.

The chancel has a five-light east window with hollow spandrels in a four-centred arch with hoodmould, and similar three-light windows to the north and south (the northern one blocked). Below and to the right of the east window is a narrow infilled doorway with slate voussoirs, forming the entrance to a 19th century burial vault.

The south transept has a gabled embattled parapet with three-light windows similar to those of the chancel, the southern with a hoodmould and the eastern without. A circular stair turret in the angle with the nave has a 19th century pointed doorway and two rectangular slit openings to the stair. The north transept has three-light windows as on the south, and a short projection on the west side (former vestry) with a tall rectangular window of two cusped-tracery lights to its west wall and a Tudor-arched doorway to its north wall.

The rectangular central tower has an embattled parapet with chamfered slit openings to the lower stage and louvred two-light Decorated-style windows in the belfry.

The interior is largely of mid-19th century date and of good quality. The nave roof spans four bays plus a short extra section to the east, comprising arch-braced tie beam trusses on carved stone corbels with blank shields and pendants; quatrefoils appear to the spandrels and wall-plate, with further carved tracery detail between the tie beams and principal rafters. The two-bay chancel roof is similar but with angels to the corbels. The transept roofs are again similar but without the tie beams. The crossing has a plain panelled roof entirely of 19th century date, save for some medieval work at the bases of the responds to the eastern arch, which has two-centred arches on east and west.

An organ gallery with tiered benches occupies the west end of the nave. The gallery is of neo-Norman cased organ (originally made for the chapel at Penrhyn Castle) and has a balustrade of intersecting trefoil-headed tracery with quatrefoils supported on three wide arches, with a central four-centred arch and outer segmental arches. The nave retains 19th century benches with traceried ends, and plain trefoil-headed tracery screens separate the transepts. A late 20th century slate pulpit in stripped-down Gothic style stands in the nave, alongside a small octagonal pedestal font with canopied and crocketed cover of 1909, commemorating Emma J.S. Douglas-Pennant. A late 19th century Gothic reading desk and chair are also present.

The nave has a polished stone slab floor continued through the crossing, beyond which the eastern arch rises three steps to the sanctuary; the lower step is stone, while the upper two steps and the sanctuary floor itself are of slate slabs. Scrolled ironwork altar rails in memory of Owen Maelgwyn Roberts (killed in World War II) frame a large late 19th century orange-red marble reredos which obscures the lower part of the east window. This reredos bears stained glass depicting the Last Judgement, commemorating Edmund Gordon Douglas-Pennant and given by his widow, Maria, in 1887. Stained glass in the nave south-eastern window shows Saints Tegai, David and Deiniol, commemorating Reverend R.W. Griffith (died 1890), and further 19th century stained glass appears in the south window of the south transept.

The monuments merit particular attention. Below the gallery in the south-west corner of the nave (formerly on the south side of the chancel) is a fine 15th century tomb-chest, of which only two sides are now visible due to its corner position. It is traditionally thought to be that of either the first or second Sir William Griffith of Penrhyn and his wife. The visible side displays six panels with cusped and crocketed ogee canopies divided by crocketed pilasters; each contains an angel dressed in a surplice and holding a blank shield. The chest is topped by recumbent effigies: a man in armour with his head resting on a mutilated helm and his feet on a crouching lion; a woman in a long sideless gown over a tight-fitting undergarment with her head resting on a double cushion supported by an angel.

On the south wall of the chancel is a marble memorial to John Williams, Archbishop of York (died 1650), who acquired the Penrhyn Estate in 1622. It consists of a round-arched recess with panelled soffit and decorated spandrels, flanked by bracketed Corinthian columns with entablature and segmental pediment broken by his coat-of-arms and archbishop's mitre. The recess contains a gowned and capped figure of Williams kneeling at a prayer desk and holding a scroll in his left hand. A long Latin inscription is beneath the figure; his helm and spurs, which once hung nearby, are now gone.

The north wall bears a restrained neo-Romanesque slate wall tablet to George Hay Dawkins-Pennant (died 1840), builder of Penrhyn Castle, who was buried at Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, and a triangular wall monument to his eldest daughter and heiress, who died at Pisa in 1842.

The finest monument is the superb work by Richard Westmacott, erected in 1821 to Richard Pennant (died 1808) at the instigation of his widow, Anne, who had died in 1816. Constructed of white marble, it consists of a pedimented sarcophagus flanked by heroic and classically-costumed figures of a quarryman leaning on a staff and a peasant girl with her distaff, both contemplating a frieze of four groups of putti symbolising the state of the district before Pennant's succession to the Penrhyn Estate and his improvements in slate quarrying, education and agriculture. A long inscription below further eulogises his achievements.

Memorials to the fallen of the First and Second World Wars appear on the nave north and south walls respectively.