4403

 

II  

Designated  

01/04/1974  

26/09/2005  

Church of St Michael and All Angels  

 

Gwynedd  

Porthmadog  

 

Treflys  

253444  

337858  

 

An isolated church on high ground overlooking Morfa Bychan and Black Rock Sands, approximately 3km W of Porthmadog.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

A medieval church, probably mainly of the C14, substantially rebuilt and restored in 1888-9. At this time a new chancel was built, new windows were introduced into the nave, and the nave was re-roofed.  

A single-chamber parish church with detail in simple C19 Gothic style, of rubble stone with renewed slate roof behind coped gables. An earlier gabled W bellcote houses a single bell. The pointed W door, another feature to have survived the 1888-9 restoration, has thin voussoirs. The nave has 2 pointed windows in N and S walls, including a pair on the S side. The chancel has a 2-light geometrical E window and cusped S window.  

The nave has a 3-bay collar-beam roof with diagonal braces on corbels, the chancel a 2-bay arched-brace roof on corbels. The round-headed chancel arch is larger but similar in shape to the chancel arch of the earlier building. The C20 communion rail has a foliage frieze in relief. The small tub-shaped font, said to have come from Criccieth, is post-Reformation and stands on a modern stone pedestal. Plain pews are C20. The simple polygonal wooden pulpit has Gothic arched panels. In the NE corner of the chancel is an early Christian inscribed stone discovered in the churchyard in 1904. It has a Latin inscription 'Iaconus Fili Min Iacit' beneath a Chi-Rho monogram. In the nave S wall is a simple slate memorial tablet to John Prichard (d 1851). The E window has stained glass incorporating oval medallions depicting scenes in the life of Christ, post 1956.  

Listed for its special architectural interest as one of the humbler small upland churches of Wales, of medieval origin.