4369

 

II  

Designated  

19/10/1971  

18/06/1998  

Church of St Edern  

 

Gwynedd  

Nefyn  

Pwllheli  

Edern  

227953  

339589  

 

Situated to the E of Lon Llan, some 370m SE of Pont Edern in Edern village.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

Church rebuilt in 1867-8 to designs by Richard Coad. Nave, chancel and N transept said to be on medieval footings, the S transept added later. Registers from 1780.  

Parish church, rubble stone with ashlar dressings, slate roofs, coped gables and crested ridge tiles. Nave with W bellcote and S porch, transepts, and chancel. Uncusped lancet windows. Nave has W front with low splayed buttresses each side, 2 lancets with hoodmoulds and bellcote with single pointed opening, steep coped gable and small cross on gable crest. 2 pairs of lancets to N side, S side has porch and 2 single lancets. Porch has double-chamfer ashlar pointed entry with hoodmould, and chamfered plinth. Stone benches, quarry-tile floor and pointed door within. S transept has paired lancets W, single lancet E and plate-traceried 2-light S window with cinquefoil in head, and hoodmould. N transept is similar but sides have only a single lancet to W, N window has a quatrefoil in head. Chancel has lean-to vestry on N with single E lancet, E end has big 3-light ashlar E window with stepped lancets, cusped, the centre light with trefoil in head and spandrels with small trefoils in circles. S single lancet.  

Plastered whitewashed walls with ashlar dressings, principally the window heads and chancel arch which is broad, 2-chamfer, the inner order on moulded corbelled capitals. Roofs: some C15 arch braced trusses with cusped struts have been reused with C19 copies, 5-bay roof to nave, 3-bay roofs to each transept. 2 nave trusses, 2 in N transept and 1 in S transept are medieval. Broad arch-braced principals to crossing, arch-braced rafter-roof to chancel. Open back bench pews, pine pulpit with simple panelled sides. One step to chancel, simple pine reading desks each side, altar rail on iron and brass uprights. Pointed N door to vestry. Richly coloured E window of Sermon on the Mount, c1868, to the Rev J P Jones Parry (d1865), 43 years vicar of Edeyrn, given by his widow and children. Coloured glass borders and inserts in transept end windows. Well-designed C19 bowl font with carved band around in C12 style, moulded below, then red-stone squat shaft with diagonal wave mouldings on moulded ashlar base. C19 brass plaque to members of the Griffith family of Cefn Amwlch, Tudweiliog, buried at Edern in C17 and C18.  

Included as a small Victorian church of simple character that preserves late medieval roof trusses from the preceding church on the site.