Church of St Gwynog/Cynog

Church of St Gwynog

This is a rural parish church built of rubble stone with limestone dressings and a slate roof. It comprises a single elongated cell combining the nave and chancel without differentiation, a 19th-century south porch, and a vestry projecting northward at right angles. A weatherboarded timber-framed tower with a slated spire stands over the west end.

The windows are widely spaced, comprising 3-light windows with cusped heads under a depressed arch on the south side, 2-light windows on the north, and a particularly fine 3-light 15th-century panelled window at the east end featuring grotesque heads at the apex and the tails of its now-missing hood moulding. A priest's door on the west end of the south side has a quatrefoil roundel above it. The south door, sheltered within the porch, has a pointed head. The west end has a central buttress and contains no windows. A bronze bench-mark is set into the southwest corner.

Interior

The walls are plastered. The nave is covered by a 19th-century open roof of six bays with arch-braced collar trusses with raking struts supporting two tiers of purlins. Between the purlins, the central panel is filled with attenuated cusped wind braces. The chancel has a boarded barrel vault, cross-braced, with medieval bosses at the intersections. The floor steps up into the chancel, with a further two steps rising to the sanctuary. Timber supporting legs for the tower are visible at the west end of the nave.

The outstanding feature of the interior is a late 15th-century rood screen with loft above, comprising six bays on either side of the central opening. The screen has a low-set bressumer with elaborate tracery surviving in the panel heads on the north side. Fourteen heavy timber treads set into a recess in the north wall, without a handrail, provide access to the loft, which cantilevers on both sides of the screen on panelled coving, more elaborately carved towards the nave. Bands of undercut flowing meander leaf and dragonesque carvings run between mouldings on each side. The loft is panelled between broad moulded studs on both sides. This screen, the best to survive in the county, was recorded by Reverend J. Parker in 1828–32.

The early 17th-century pulpit is octagonal, panelled in oak with a sloping shelf around the top. At the west end stands a plain 19th-century octagonal raised font, with a recovered octagonal late medieval bowl displayed nearby. The 19th-century pews and choir stalls are in place. The organ, a free-standing instrument presented in 1855, has a 4-octave single manual with six stops in a carved case. The east window is by Evans Bros of Shrewsbury. The north window contains re-assembled glass from a 14th- or 15th-century window that was dismembered by bomb damage, including a yellow-stain figure of a bishop inscribed "Sce ?Gynog". The tower contains three bells.

Monuments

The east wall holds two significant monuments: a fine large painted limestone wall monument with a long inscription in an enriched Ionic aedicule under a broken pediment mounted with surprised angels, with symbols of death at the sides and a draped death's head below, commemorating Mathew Pryce of Park-pen-prys (died 1699); and a Gothic aedicule to David Jones, rural dean (died 1864). The north wall bears a tablet in white on grey to Andrew Davies of Plâs Newydd (died 1816). Five tablets in the nave commemorate George Baker (died 1841), Edward Matthews of Penddole, Trefeglwys, Edward Matthews of Glanhafren (died 1827), John Owens (died 1893, in a gabled Gothic marble monument), and Leonard Lewis (died 1831). The south wall contains a white marble sarcophagus to David Hamer of Weeg (died 1833), by Milnes of Oswestry. There is also heraldic arms with strapwork mantling.

Graveyard

The graveyard contains numerous well-carved slate headstones by the Kinsey family of Llandinam. John 'Ceriog' Hughes, the 19th-century lyric poet of Llanarmon, Dyffryn Ceriog (1832–1887), who was manager of the Van Railway at Caersws, is buried here.