Church of St Cadfarch

Church of St Cadfarch

A simple Decorated Gothic style church comprising a nave, crossing, chancel, south porch, north bell turret and north vestry. The building is constructed of blocks of sawn slate beneath a slate roof, with heavy yellow sandstone dressings. Corbelled eaves and a tall plinth with moulded sandstone coping form distinctive external features. Most windows are single lights in geometric tracery with cusped trefoiled heads.

The south porch has a gabled form with steeply pitched roof, raised stone copings and a cross at the apex. A tall pointed arch of yellow sandstone with broached bases at plinth height, roll mouldings and hoodmould frames the entrance. Inside, the porch has a wagon roof, and the doorway into the nave features a trefoiled head with a boarded door hung on decorative strap hinges. To the right of the porch, the nave has two pairs of single lights linked by a continuous hoodmould. A large gable rises above the crossing, beneath which sits a tall two-light window with trefoil-headed lights and a quatrefoil under the arch, flanked by an angle buttress to its right.

The chancel contains a single trefoiled light on the north side, with paired single lights to its right. A three-light panel-traceried window dominates the east end. A full-height angle buttress with offsets stands to its right, over which runs a catslide roof to the north vestry; the vestry has a trefoiled light to its east end. A boarded door accesses the vestry from the chancel's north side. The north side of the chancel includes a projecting two-stage bell turret with a hipped roof set at a lower ridge height than the nave and chancel. The second stage has rectangular louvre openings, some paired, with a similar light to the first stage. Adjacent to the turret is a single light, and beyond this an external stack above a small lean-to boiler house. The nave is lit by a pair of single lights, and the west end features an oversized wheel-window with a continuous hoodmould.

Interior

The interior walls are of polychrome brickwork with a yellow background and banding, diaper-work and relieving arches in red and black, along with narrow slivers of blue-grey slate. The nave has a wagon roof and a quarry tile floor with polychrome diaper-work. The paired windows have trefoiled rere-arches supported on black marble colonettes with ringed capitals and bases.

An octagonal bowl font stands to the southwest, incised with crosses, IHS monograms and birds, resting on a base of clustered shafts. Remains of an earlier font lie nearby. The nave has a central aisle with benches featuring carved ends, and an octagonal wooden pulpit with decorative front positioned to the northeast.

Four arches spring from shared responds at the crossing, forming pointed stone arches with two orders of mouldings on wall posts with ringed capitals. The crossing is roofed with wood panelling supported on stone corbels. Choir stalls with decorative backs featuring open trefoiled arches springing from colonettes occupy the space. The north bay contains an organ said to be Grecian, dating to around 1800. The sanctuary has a three-bay arched-brace roof with cusped windbraces, and a decorative white stone reredos with traceried arches on colonettes.

Memorial tablets are principally dedicated to former rectors. A marble tablet to the north wall of the chancel commemorates Reverend Thomas Lewis Hughes, who died at the rectory in 1836. Two plain tablets to the north wall of the nave include one to the painter Richard Wilson R.A., born at Penegoes Rectory in 1713 and died in Denbighshire in 1782; the second is to Rector John Williams, who died in 1904. The south wall bears a tablet to Rector David Roberts, who served from 1884 to 1926.

Stained glass by Heaton, Butler and Bayne dates to around 1880. The east window depicts Christ, though the dedication is obscured. The south chancel window carries stained glass with the inscription 'lettest thy servant depart in peace'. Small floral motifs appear in the south nave window, while the north nave window depicts Christ and his disciples. The wheel-window possibly contains fragments of medieval glass.