17089

 

II  

Designated  

15/01/1996  

15/01/1996  

Church of Saint John Evangelist  

 

Wrexham  

Rhosllanerchrugog  

 

Rhosllanerchrugog  

329251  

346029  

E  

In a wooded churchyard in the angle of Church Road and Cemetery Road.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

A parish was formed in 1844, and the church was built 1852-3, to designs of Thomas Penson the younger.  

Coursed and squared stone with slate roofs. Norman style. Cruciform plan with nave, transepts and chancel, and bell-tower in angle of S transept and chancel. Nave of 4 bays, each with a broad single-light round-arched window, with engaged recessed shafts and cable-moulded arches. S door in shallow gabled portal with 3 orders of moulding to the archway. Corbel table continues across the entire building, incorporating human and animal heads. Paired W windows. Triple windows in N and S walls of transepts. 3-stage bell-tower has paired bell-chamber lights set in chevron moulded archway, and is surmounted by a pyramidal spirelet. Gabled organ chamber to S of chancel, which has triple E-window with chevron moulding and enriched capitals to engaged shafts.  

The Norman style of the exterior is carried through in interior detail. Cruciform plan: nave of 4 bays, with wide crossing to transepts and chancel. Nave articulated by braced collar and queen-post trusses sprung from wall posts. Similar trusses to transepts and chancel; nave and transept roofs intersect over the crossing with a braced central post carried from crossed principles. Cable and billet moulding to transept arches which are sprung from corbelled coupled wall-shafts. Chancel arch similar, but with full-height shafts, and stylised stiff-leaf capitals. Chancel has chevron moulded arcading to E wall. Fittings largely designed with the church, including choir stalls with arcading to front bench, arcaded pulpit, and font which is a plain basin with cable moulding carried on clustered shafts. Stained glass in chancel and N transept, c1882 by H.Walter Lonsdale: figurative panels on a grisaille ground.  

Listed as a good example of a Romanesque revival church, in which the stylistic vocabulary is carried through both architecture and interior fittings.