14927

 

II  

Designated  

29/05/1968  

04/11/1999  

Church of St Deiniol  

 

Gwynedd  

Llanddeiniolen  

Caernarfon  

Llanddeiniolen  

254570  

365920  

 

Situated in high isolated position off the B 4366 with only a few houses around in tiny settlement of Llanddeiniolen; set in roughly rectangular churchyard with roughly coursed rubblestone wall and simple entrance with iron gates on east side.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

Entirely rebuilt in 1843 by J G Weightman and E M Hadfield of Sheffield close to the site of the old church, which stood immediately to the north-east. Weightman and Hadfield were prolific church builders of the mid-C19, most of their major ecclesiastical commissions being for Roman Catholic clients.  

Decorated style. Simple cruciform plan comprising nave, short chancel, transepts, north porch and vestry. Roughly coursed rubblestone with buttered pointing and granite ashlar dressings; large slate roofs have coped verges with trefoil-gabled kneelers and stone crosses to gables. Nave, buttressed in 3 bays, has pointed 2-light trefoil-headed windows with small mouchettes and hoodmoulds to eastern bays; gabled porch in west bay on south has iron cross to gable and pointed hollow-chamfered inner and outer doorways, former with nail-studded strap-hinged door, latter with iron gates; small narrow trefoil-headed windows without glazing to sides and 2 old stoups stand outside. West wall of nave has tall, slightly projecting gabled bellcote with single bell in arched opening to top and Latin inscription with date 1843 above single broad lancet to ground stage. Chancel has east window in 4 shallow trefoil-headed lights with further trefoils above forming Y-tracery and additional mouchettes and quatrefoils to top; vestry with small single-light Caernarfon arch on east. Transept gables have 3-light trefoil-headed windows with mouchettes and quatrefoil to tops.  

Largely unaltered Victorian interior retaining a few features from the earlier church. Simple stone-corbelled arch-braced roof in 4 bays to nave with curved struts from collars to principal rafters, repeated in 2 bays to each transept. Double-chamfered pointed chancel arch with moulded capitals and bases to half-octagonal responds. Octagonal pedestal font in north-west corner of nave has superscription "IHC/ 1665/ WS: WP"; other fittings all Victorian including nave and transept pews, brass lectern, octagonal wooden pulpit with Gothic tracery panels, altar rails and reredos. Dark stained glass in east window and stained glass of c1940 (in C19 style) to nave south windows; bell is 1930. Board in vestry records the rebuilding of the church in 1843 with a grant from the Incorporated Society for Promoting the Enlargement, Building and Repairing of Churches & Chapels. Monuments: several refixed from old church; in nave (south wall) plain pedimented tablet to Capt. John Browning RN (d.1813); chancel (north wall) marble memorial with plain pilasters and urn to top commemorates William Thomas (d.1763) and his wife, Dorothy (d.1786), erected 1817; on south wall a tablet to the son and daughters of Rice and Margaret Thomas with dates of death between 1775 and 1856; north transept, brass plate with shield to Robert Wyn, rector, d.1720 and another with hour glass, skull, cross bones and skeleton holding arrows to his daughter, Elizabeth (n.d.) on east wall; on west wall to members of Morris family (d.1805 to 1830). Slate slab First World War Memorial on south wall of nave and further late C19 and C20 tablets throughout.  

Included as an unspoilt mid-C19 parish church in the simple Church Commissioner style of the period; largely unaltered interior retains C18 monuments and other fittings from the old church.