Church of St Curig

Church of St Curig

This church comprises a west tower with spire, nave, chancel, south porch, north aisle and north vestry. The building is Grade II* listed.

The tower is a fine medieval structure of three stages, constructed from large blocks of shaley stone. It has tall diagonal buttresses with offsets to the northwest and southwest angles, and a shallow angle buttress to the southeast angle. A large plinth runs around the base, shortly above which is a dripcourse—both Perpendicular features. The tower has battlemented parapets of late 19th-century date and a stair turret to the northeast angle. The openings throughout have shallow segmental heads of stone voussoirs. Those at the west end are Perpendicular in style: a doorway, slightly inset, with a Tudor-arched chamfered head; and a 3-light window above. The south side features a small light to the second stage and a 3-light louvre opening to the upper stage, with late 19th-century yellow sandstone tracery. Similar louvre openings appear on the east and north sides. The north stair turret has four narrow stair lights. Surmounting the tower is a short broach spire, lead-covered and topped with a weather-vane, rising from a short square base. This base has a 3-light trefoil-headed louvre opening on each of its four sides.

Much of the rest of the church was rebuilt in the late 19th century using small blocks of random grey stone with yellow sandstone dressings. The roofs are slate with raised stone copings, tile cresting and crosses to the apexes of the nave and chancel. The south wall of the nave and chancel is continuous, though the chancel is lower in height.

A gabled porch projects from the left of centre of the nave wall, featuring sandstone quoins and dressings and a splayed base. It contains a tall pointed-arched doorway with roll mouldings; the arch springs from attached octagonal shafts with ringed capitals and bases. The doorway itself has double ribbed doors, and the side walls contain quatrefoil lights. To the right of the porch are two large pointed-arched 19th-century windows with 3-light Perpendicular-style tracery, the lights having cinquefoiled heads. To the left of the porch is a small medieval 2-light window with bar tracery of red sandstone and shallow pointed heads, though it is partly obscured by a tree. Attached to the wall to the left is a plain marble tablet recording that "near this spot is buried John Evans, vicar from 1852 to 1876".

The chancel features a pair of late 19th-century 2-light windows under shallow segmental heads, with trefoil-headed lights in plate tracery. The east end has a 3-light Perpendicular window with trefoil-headed lights, set within a chamfered, pointed-arched surround that is itself slightly inset under a segmental head.

Much early fabric survives to the north aisle, though in the late 19th century three gabled half-dormers were inserted into the roof. The large pointed-arched windows here match those on the south wall of the nave. To the right, a short lean-to structure adjoins the aisle in front of the stair turret, ending in a doorway with a chamfered shouldered lintel. Its front face has a 2-light window in the style of the south wall of the chancel. Adjoining the left end of the aisle is the gabled vestry, which has a short octagonal stone stack rising to its gable apex. The vestry features a 3-light Perpendicular window to its front (re-set from elsewhere), and to its right, a wide doorway with a flat head, beneath which the boarded door has a Tudor-arched head.

Interior

The nave contains a 15th-century-style barrel-vaulted wood-panelled roof of three-and-a-half bays, divided by hammerbeam trusses with billeted decoration. Wall-posts rest on stone corbels, with the hammerbeams supporting large carved wooden angels. A three-bay 15th-century arcade to the north aisle features continuous 4-centred arches on square piers, all plastered and whitewashed. A tall pointed tower arch of narrow stone voussoirs—left unplastered—separates the nave from the tower chamber.

The tower chamber has a vaulted plastered ceiling with a central opening for bell ropes. A small doorway with a monolithic lintel topped by a triangular head opens to the north side, leading to the stair turret. The floor is quarry tile with an inlaid slate tablet recording a restoration of the tower and spire in 1983-85.

A Perpendicular octagonal font of white marble stands in the northwest corner of the nave. It features pairs of blind trefoiled arches to each face and has an octagonal stem and base. The font was apparently removed from the church in the 16th century and replaced in 1660. The central aisle has a quarry tile floor flanked by wooden pews with carved bench ends. In the southeast corner stands a pulpit with a polygonal wooden front on a stone base.

The north aisle has a lean-to wooden roof with arched braces supported on stone corbels; the 19th-century dormer windows form part of this roof structure. A 4-centred arch at the east end leads to the organ recess. Fold-up benches stand against the aisle wall.

A 4-centred chancel arch, matching the arcade in style, separates the nave from the chancel. The rood screen, a reconstruction of 1878 of the original medieval screen, features decorative openwork including a central opening with a Tudor arch and flanking bays with traceried heads. Beneath the brattishing runs a foliate frieze from the original medieval screen.

The chancel has a three-bay hammerbeam roof, similar to that of the nave but more ornate, with roll mouldings to the arched-brace trusses, cusped windbraces and struts. It also features carved wooden angels supported on the hammerbeams. To the left is a three-bay arcade to the vestry, 19th-century work in 15th-century style, with heavily moulded and decorated Tudor arches on octagonal piers with ringed capitals and bases. The left arch, which is narrower, leads to the organ recess. Choir stalls with decorated bench ends stand one step up from the main floor. The altar sits on an encaustic and quarry tile floor and is furnished with an altar rail featuring iron scrollwork and a brass handrail, and a wood-panelled reredos with decorated openwork panels.

Much of the stained glass relates to the Lloyd family of Clochfaen and was created by Burlison and Grylls in 1878. The east window depicts St Curig holding a church. The south chancel and nave windows contain a series of heraldic shields relating to Lloyd family ancestors, dating from 1197 until 1781. In the nave, the central lights contain depictions of St Michael and St Timothy, with heraldry in the outer lights. The west end window displays similar subject matter, though its upper lights contain glass that is probably medieval. The north nave windows include depictions of the Virgin and Child and St Michael.

Memorials

Marble tablets attached to the arcade commemorate J R Pryse of Pant y drain, who died in the Boer War in 1900, and below this, a tablet to John Rhys Pryse, probably his father. To the right is a World War I memorial tablet with a roll of honour. In the chancel, an early 20th-century marble tablet commemorates Elizabeth Bennett Evans (died 1923), the church organist, and another honours Jane Bennett Evans (died 1937). On the south wall of the nave is a series of small brass tablets dating from the 19th to early 20th century, some of which commemorate members of the Lloyd Verney family of Clochfaen.