Parish Church of St Deiniol

Parish Church of St Deiniol

This is a modest mid-Victorian parish church of the 1870s, consisting of a continuous nave and chancel with a gabled north porch, and a shorter south aisle with a vestry adjoining to the east. The church is constructed of coursed, rough-dressed slatestone blocks with Wrexham sandstone dressings, and has medium-pitched slate roofs with tiled ridges.

The exterior features slab-coped and kneelered parapets with gable crosses to the east gables. The nave's west gable carries a 2-stage bellcote with lapped copings and a shouldered-arched bell-opening, topped with an iron weathervane. Below this are two tall lancets flanking a tall stepped buttress, with smaller outer buttresses. The north side displays a 4-bay nave section and a 3-bay chancel section. The chancel has stepped, set-back buttresses at the east end and at its junction with the nave. A gabled north porch is positioned at the second bay from the east, with a segmentally-arched entrance, roll-moulded soffit, chamfered reveals and a moulded stringcourse returned onto flanking buttresses. The pointed-arched inner entrance has roll-moulding and a deeply-recessed boarded door, with a simple clustered-truss roof.

The nave windows are paired lancets with hollow-chamfered jambs and steeply-splayed sills. The chancel windows are simple lancets with roll-moulded jambs and trefoil inner tracery heads, each light placed within a slight recess with dividing pilasters. A continuous moulded stringcourse runs around the building. The east end has a simple lancet group with a broader and taller central light. The south wall shows paired lancets to the nave and aisle. The south aisle contains three pairs of lancets (two to the west, one to the east with cusped heads), and a rose window with trefoil tracery at the south aisle's east gable. A cusped rose window appears at the west gable end of the aisle. The vestry is a single-storey lean-to with a parapet and flush stepped buttress, with a pointed-arched entrance and a rectangular light with chamfered sides and trefoil head.

Interior

The four-bay nave has arched-braced collar trusses carried on false hammerbeams with simple ocular tracery above the collars and diagonal boarding behind plain rafters. The floor has a simple polychromed tiled pavement in red, yellow and black, with Victorian pitch pine pews. At the west end is an octagonal limestone font with sunk quatrefoil oculi to alternate faces, on an octagonal base with a chamfered lower section. The pulpit is similarly octagonal in style, with recessed foliated squares and a row of small oculi containing trefoil decoration below a chamfered rail, on a circular chamfered plinth with three ascending steps from the east.

A 2-bay arcade with pointed arches in Early English style (with quarter-round and hollow-chamfered mouldings) divides the nave from the shorter south aisle. The arcade has a central column with a moulded base and capital. A pointed chancel arch with roll-moulding is carried on dentilated wall corbels. The chancel is stepped-up with a polychromed tiled pavement and simple Victorian Gothic pitch pine choirstalls. The sanctuary is similarly stepped-up. Moulded oak altar rails are carried on four square polychromed iron posts with scrolled spandrel brackets. A retable with framed oak stiles and rails and veneered oak infills features simple arcading to raised, dentilated and pedimented outer sections flanking the east window.

The chancel roof is a shallow-pointed waggon roof with two moulded transverse ribs and three smaller moulded secondary ribs, dividing the roof into six compartments on each side, each decorated with circa 1900 Art Nouveau style stencil decoration in pale blue and gold. A Welsh painted inscription in Black Letter Gothic script appears below the moulded wall plate on both sides. A roll-moulded segmental arch at the east end of the chancel gives access to the eastern section of the south aisle. This eastern section is separated from the 2-bay western section by a pointed arch similar to the chancel arch. A moulded and shouldered-arched entrance with a 6-panel door leads to the vestry.

Monuments and fittings include a very fine military limestone effigy of Ieuan ap Gruffydd ap Madoc ap Iorweth of Glanllyn, dated 1395, contained within a 19th-century shouldered-arched niche in the north wall of the chancel. The effigy is slightly over-life sized with contemporary arms and armour and a raised Latin inscription in Lombardic capitals. On the south wall of the south aisle is a funerary tablet to Ellis Lewis of Llwyn Gwern and his issue, erected by his great-granddaughter Elizabeth Jones around 1720, in grey marble with a white marble inscription plaque, pediment with a cherub's head below and a heraldic polychromed cartouche above. Two framed benefactors' boards with painted inscriptions are also present, one dated 1725 and the other of early 19th-century date.

In the arch between the chancel and the south aisle stands a free-standing late Victorian pine organ in simple Gothic style, made by Bishop and Sons of London. Against the east wall of the south aisle stands a second-quarter or mid 19th-century lead-lined, full-immersion baptismal font of rectangular form and pine construction, with a coved lid.

The east window contains a large Assumption scene, probably contemporary with the church's rebuilding around 1873. The eastern-most nave south window has an early 20th-century grisaille window depicting the Crucifixion.