Parish Church of St Mary

Parish Church of St Mary

This former priory, now a parish church, is constructed of random rubble with mostly 19th-century sandstone dressings, standing on a tall plinth that is battered slightly on the chancel side and particularly noticeable on the south side. The building is roofed in renewed slate with stone-coped gable parapets, moulded kneelers, and a gable cross to the east.

The west front features a single-storey gabled porch with a surmounting cross and a pointed-arched entrance with a returned label and foliated label-stops. The doors are 19th-century work, diagonally boarded with decorative ironwork. The left porch return has a plain two-light window. To the left of the porch stands an early masonry projection, probably Romanesque work, forming an irregular buttress. Projecting northwards from this is a masonry continuation incorporating part of a chamfered medieval entrance jamb, adapted as a buttress in the 19th century. Above the porch in the west gable sits a simple chamfered, pointed-arched window of 19th-century date, with the blocked arch of its Romanesque predecessor visible above. A large late 19th-century west bellcote, coped and gabled with battered sides, features a pointed-arched bell opening with a cusped and chamfered inner arch.

The south side displays a simple buttress to the left with a plain pointed-arched lancet to its right. Beyond this are two pairs of lancets and a two-tier buttress, with a further lancet pair to the right and a terminating buttress at the east end.

The north side has a two-light, square-headed window towards the west end within a former opening, and a three-light 19th-century lancet to its left. A gabled north chapel, forming a T-plan with the nave and chancel, rises from the centre. This chapel has angle buttresses and a large plate tracery window with three cusped lancets and two spandrel oculi all within a pointed outer arch of sandstone, featuring a moulded label with naturalistic foliage stops. Below this runs a moulded and stopped stringcourse, raised up to the centre beneath the window. A further paired lancet appears on the chapel's west return. The north chancel has similar lancets, partly obscured by a single-storey late 19th-century lean-to vestry extruded in the angle between the chancel and chapel. This vestry has a modern fixed boarded door to the left with glazed upper section and a two-light arched window to the right, with a further diagonally-boarded door and plain central chimney. The vestry's east wall is partly medieval, with a section of 13th-century gritstone window jamb surviving to the left. Further angle buttressing rises at the east end, 13th-century but with 19th-century capping. A fine early English triple lancet group of unusual height in gritstone with chamfered reveals and inner arches completes the east wall, showing evidence of former ferrumenta.

The large nave contains a stone-flagged floor and simple late 19th-century pitch-pine pews on wooden plinths. A five-bay roof features queen post trusses with pointed arches to the centre formed by curved bracing. Plain tie-beams brace onto double-curved stone wall corbels, except the fifth and seventh from the west on the north side, which sit above the higher pointed arches of the north chapel. Straight cusped windbraces run across the central pairs of purlins. An octagonal pitch-pine pulpit sits on an Early English style cluster column base with blind tracery panels in two tiers. At the west end stands a curious small font bowl of cut and polished slatestone, possibly medieval, inscribed with runic or bardic characters and the date 1882. It has a columnar limestone base with a square slatestone plinth, further inscribed with the Nennius alphabet. The two easternmost bays of the north side of the nave contain a fine early 13th-century two-bay arcade dividing the nave from the north chapel. The central pier and engaged flanking piers feature clustered shafts with standard Early English capitals and bases; heavily moulded pointed arches carry a continuous moulded label on the nave face. Each arch is fitted with a six-bay Perpendicular-style part open screen of early 20th-century date, with plain panelled dado and open upper section, featuring cusped and foliated tracery heads. The central sections of the western-most screen form opening doors. The beam displays vinescroll carving with cusped brattishing above.

The north chapel has a two-bay roof as described and a stone-flagged floor now with a raised timber platform over it. Pitch-pine benching matches that in the nave. A simple late 19th-century altar table in Early English style features a three-bay front with foliated columns and shouldered arches. A large chamfered, double-arched chancel arch displays a fine early 20th-century oak rood screen in 14th-century Decorated style. Of six bays, this features complex open tracery arches above blind tracery dado, with cusped and depressed ogee arches. The central two bays have dado doors with applied 19th-century carvings depicting the Evangelist symbols. An octagonal dividing shaft with blind tracery, shaft-ring, and naturalistic foliage capital separates the doors. Two carved and partly gilded angel figures flank the central doors, supported on foliated corbels. A lierne-vaulted canopy with complex Rood Beam carries two tiers of vinescroll and cusped and foliated brattishing. Surmounting the Rood Screen is a large Rood Group with carved and gilded figures above a tripartite canopy niche containing a central Seated Christ with attendant angel figures and crocketted finials.

The chancel, stepped up from the nave, has a polychromed tiled pavement of conjoined octagons to the centre and a two-and-a-half-bay roof as before. A 13th-century north door arch, now leading to the vestry, features deep chamfered reveals and evidence of original limewashed plaster. A stepped-up sanctuary with polychromed pavement lies beyond. Oak dado panelling extends across this and the east end of the chancel and continues around onto the east wall under the triple lancet window. Flanking the window are carved four-bay sections with fine carving similar to that of the Rood Screen; that to the left is dated 1918 and that to the right 1908. Both feature crocketted finials and carved surmounting figures—the Blessed Virgin Mary to the left and St David to the right—contained within ogee tracery niches. Contemporary altar table and flanking architectural candelabra with triangular profiles and wide crenellated drip trays stand nearby. At the base of each candelabra is an inscription with name and date: to the left 'John Parry, Nov.16th 1911' and to the right 'Morris Vivian Parry, Aug.1st 1908'.

Stained and painted glass includes plain quarry leads to the nave and north chapel, except for a figurative panel in the central nave south wall window dated 1938, commemorating Major E C Thomas. The chancel east window group contains 13th-century style figurative glass with scenes from the Passion contained within elongated roundels set in a grisaille background, created for James Wyatt of Bryn Gwynant, died 1882. The south window displays good coloured grisaille glass with scenes of Christ as Good Shepherd and Light of the World.

Monuments in the chancel include simple white and black marble funerary tablets to members of the Pritchard, Kay, and Morris families, mostly of the mid-19th century. In the nave, on the south wall, stands a good carved relief panel in oak to Evan Lloyd Esq. of Hafod Lwyfog, died 1678, with arms of Owain Gwynedd, in a contemporary oak frame.