Church of St Tecla

The Church of St Tecla is a Decorated Gothic style building, likely dating to the 13th or 14th century, constructed of rubble stone with a slate roof and stone gable copings. The church consists of a nave and chancel under a single roof, with a small, west-facing bellcote. A porch on the south side features a steeply pitched gable roof with stone coping, and plain buttresses that connect to set-back buttresses flanking the entrance via string courses which also run above a moulded plinth. The pointed-arched entrance doorway has a dripmould, and the upper gable is punctuated by a round-lobed trefoil window. A diagonally boarded door is secured with a decorative cast iron strap hinge. The south front of the church has three two-light windows with trefoil heads, tracery composed of two long-lobed trefoils and a quatrefoil, all topped with hoodmoulds featuring floral label stops. The east gable has a large three-light trefoil-headed window, unusually featuring trefoils at the base, and tracery in the Decorated style. A smaller quatrefoil sits above the east window in the gable, crowned by an iron cross at the apex. On the north side, a gabled vestry is located to the west, with a two-light mullion window in the gable end. A side entrance to the vestry has an ashlar doorway and a diagonally boarded door. The vestry chimney rises with a raking cap and penetrates the nave roof. To the right of the vestry are three pointed arched windows mirroring those on the south front. The west elevation has a window of three trefoiled lights with 19th-century Decorated tracery, including a circle enclosing three trefoils, topped with a trefoil in the upper gable. The bellcote has raking offsets, a four-centred arched bell opening, and fleur-de-lys shaped coping.

Inside, the nave roof is comprised of five bays with deep-arched collar trusses, featuring a trefoil high above the collar. The trusses spring from heavily moulded corbels and have ashlar pieces at wall plate level. A large, plain Gothic arch frames the east window, with a panelled reredos screen below. The interior also contains simple close-boarded pews with shaped ends, a brass altar rail with spiral-twist columns and branched scroll supports, and a pulpit with an octagonal wooden drum, tapered at the stem, with richly carved panels featuring blind tracery of cinquefoil arches and quatrefoils. A notable feature is a late-medieval brass chandelier with two tiers of branches, one of four and one of eight stems decorated with swirling foliage, crowned by a figure of the Virgin Mary below a beasthead with a ring. The font is a fine late-medieval example, with pronounced roll mouldings: an octagonal bowl decorated with sacred and abstract symbols springs from a waisted, octagonal stem onto a 19th-century square plinth. Stained glass within the east window dates from around 1800 by Francis Eginton, originally part of a larger window brought from St Asaph Cathedral; it depicts Christ in a vibrant red robe contemplating a vision of the future, accompanied by an angel in blue robes holding a chalice, and cherubs with instruments of the Passion. A mid-20th century two-light window on the north nave, depicting St George and St Michael, serves as a memorial to Glyn Price and Frank Campbell Jones, commemorating the 1939-45 war.