26268

 

II  

Designated  

28/03/2002  

28/03/2002  

Christ Church  

 

Flintshire  

Mostyn  

Mold  

Glan y Don  

316764  

379550  

 

Reached by a narrow lane off S side of A548. Located in a large rectangular churchyard sloping up to S, surrounded by a coursed stone wall with saddleback coping. Entrance to W, tall moulded piers with buttresses and capstones with gablets.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

By Ambrose Poynter, architect, of 1844-5, at the expense of the Mostyn and Pennant families. The church suffered some damage in WWII including disturbance to masonry at upper levels and loss of a finial. Many of the church furnishings are C20, some donated as memorials. The W end was re-ordered in the 1980s.  

Asymmetrical church in simple Early English style; nave, chancel, NW steeple including porch, and S vestry. Constructed of dressed coursed pale freestone under slate roofs, with dressings of the same stone. Detail includes buttresses to angles with offsets, continuous sill band, plinth, moulded stone eaves, and raised copings with kneelers. Tall pointed lancets under hoodmoulds with decorative end bosses containing quarry glazing. Three-stage tower, incorporating an entrance to the N side, with broach spire. Doorway with 2 orders of attached shafts, ringed capitals and bases, double chamfered pointed arch, and continuous hoodmould, the end bosses decorated with beasts. Single lancet to middle stage, pointed-arched louvre in plate tracery to upper stage with 2 pointed lights and a roundel, hoodmould and sill band. Dentilled cornice to spire, with tall octagonal pinnacles at each angle. Lucarne to each face of spire, which is surmounted by a weather vane. E and W sides of tower have same openings to middle and upper stages. To the N side, in angle of spire and nave, is a cross-angle 2-storey stair turret with flat-roof. Chamfered doorway with shouldered head and narrow rectangular stair-light above, both now blocked. The N side of the nave is 4-window with a 5th lancet to the W of the tower; the chancel is 2-window. East end has a large bar-traceried E window in Geometrical style; 3 pointed lancets and 3 roundels above. The S side of the chancel has a lateral stone stack with tall brick shaft. Lean-to vestry to L containing a chamfered doorway with shouldered head, and lancet to E end. To the R is a lancet window, beneath which is a square-headed basement doorway reached by stone steps with iron railings. Both doorways are now infilled with steel sheeting. The S side of the nave is 7-window; cross-finial to W gable apex; that from E gable is missing. Three-light window to W end; tall stepped lancets with individual hoodmoulds.  

Nave with tall chancel arch; polygonal columns with ringed capitals and bases supporting a pointed arch with several orders of mouldings. Gallery to W end with boarded front bearing an inscription recording that the church was built in 1844 to accommodate 516 people with a grant from the incorporated society for promoting the enlargement, rebuilding and repair of churches and chapels. The gallery was infilled in the late C20. A screen with 3 tall lancet windows is flanked by organ pipes with rooms behind. Beneath the gallery front is a partition wall with 2 lancet windows. Lobby to centre with double panelled doors to rear leading to meeting room. Entrance doors to R leading to porch, which has a staircase to tower. The nave has a C20 5-bay roof with tie beams and struts; canted ceiling with diagonal struts. Octagonal stone font at W end with decorative roundels to each face, on clustered shafts on an octagonal plinth. Central aisle, the pews with poppy-head bench ends; low wainscot panelling to side walls. Raised altar table in front of chancel arch; doorway to R with shouldered head to former vestry. Polygonal wood panelled pulpit to L with blind traceried panels and foliage decoration, on a wooden stem. It is a war memorial with lists of names of those who died in WWI and WWII. C20 rood screen to chancel arch with open cusped and traceried arches, a memorial of 1935 to the parents and grandfather of Trevor Eyton DL. There was formerly an inscription in Welsh above the chancel arch, now painted over. C20 roof to chancel of 2-and-a-half bays; simple collar trusses on short wall posts; roof boarded to underside with diagonal wind braces, brightly painted. Wainscot panelling to chancel, in memoray of William Vaughan Jones, vicar from 1903-30. Two rows of panelled choir stalls to each side, wood panelled altar with altar rail of decorative ironwork. Stained glass in geometrical design to E window, dated 1845, in memory of Rev Thomas Pennant, for his zeal in promoting the erection of the church. A pair of stained glass windows to N nave, including Christ, to Rev William Vaughan Jones, erected by his sisters after 1930. A group of 3 windows with biblical scenes to S nave, in memory of Helen Barratt 1847-1910, erected by her husband in 1911. Brass memorial tablet to S nave, to William Roberts, church warden (d. 1909).  

Listed as a simple early Gothic-Revival church, representing a consistent essay in the Early-English style, and for its association with the Mostyn and Pennant families.