All Saints' Church, Llangar facts for kids
Quick facts for kids All Saints' Old Parish Church |
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| Type | Church |
| Location | Llangar, Cynwyd, Denbighshire |
| Built | 15th century |
| Rebuilt | 18th century |
| Restored | 1974 |
| Restored by | R. Shoesmith |
| Governing body | Cadw |
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Listed Building – Grade I
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| Official name: Church of All Saints, Cynwyd | |
| Designated | 1966 |
| Reference no. | 704 |
| Official name: Llangar Old Parish Church & Churchyard | |
| Reference no. | ME093 |
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Llangar Church, also known as All Saints Old Parish Church, is a really old church in the Dee Valley, North Wales. It used to be the main church for the areas of Llangar and Cynwyd. Today, it's looked after by an organization called Cadw. It's super important because it's a Scheduled Monument and a Grade I Listed Building. This means it's a special historical place! You can visit it to see its amazing medieval wall paintings and its old 18th-century wooden furniture, which is still mostly the same as it was back then.
Contents
History of Llangar Church
Documents show there was a church in Llangar as early as 1291. However, the building you see today seems to have been built in the 15th century. Digs inside the church in 1971 found signs of people living there from that time.
Church Design and Features
The church has one main open space, combining the nave (where people sit) and the chancel (near the altar). It has a floor made of flat stones. The roof is supported by special arch-braced trusses from the 15th century.
The walls are covered with many layers of paintings. There are at least eight different painting styles, with the oldest ones also from the 15th century. Inside, there's lots of old wooden furniture. This includes a gallery, special enclosed seats called box pews, benches, and a pulpit. All these wooden pieces were added in the early 1700s.
Why a New Church Was Built
By 1682, the area had two main villages: Llangar and Cymmer. By 1856, most people lived even further away in Cynwyd. The old Llangar Church was far away and falling apart. So, people decided to build a new church, St John Evangelist, in Cynwyd.
This meant the old Llangar Church was left empty. Because it wasn't used, it avoided the big changes and renovations that many churches had in the 1800s. This is why its 18th-century features are still so well preserved!
Saving the Old Church
After being abandoned, the church became very run down. Luckily, Cadw took over its care. A big project to save and restore the church started in 1974. Now, it's a protected site that people can visit.
Roof Timbers: A Look Up High
The oldest parts of the roof are four arch-braced trusses. These form four sections in the middle of the church. At the west end, above the gallery, some trusses were changed in the 1600s or 1700s. They are divided by a collar-beam truss.
At the chancel end, the roof is covered with wooden panels. This creates a barrel-shaped ceiling, like a "canopy of honor." This design is from the 15th century, even though most of the wood there now is newer.
Internal Woodwork: Step Inside
The inside of Llangar Church has many wooden fittings from the early 1700s. Because the church was later abandoned, these pieces survived almost perfectly. Most churches from that time had their old furniture removed in the 1800s.
The Gallery and Seating
At the west end, there's a large gallery. You can reach it by a stone spiral staircase. The gallery has wooden benches where a choir would sit. There's also an enclosed area and a special music stand.
The main part of the church has "box pews." These are like small, enclosed boxes where families would sit. Some pews face the east, towards the altar. Others, near the pulpit, face south. This shows how important the pulpit and sermons were back then, even more than the altar where Mass was held.
The Pulpit
The pulpit itself is on the south wall. It's a wooden structure with panels. It's a "triple combination" pulpit, meaning it has three parts: the pulpit for sermons, a reading desk, and a clerk's desk. This pulpit was put together using older pieces from the 1600s.
Wall Paintings: Stories on the Walls
The north and south walls of the church have small pieces of wall paintings. There might be as many as eight different layers of paint, from the 15th to the 18th centuries.
Medieval Paintings
The oldest paintings, from before the Reformation, were long sequences of pictures. On the north wall, you can see a series of rustic frames. They look like wooden frames that would have held pictures. These pictures might have shown scenes from the Passion (events leading to Jesus's crucifixion), but it's hard to tell exactly what they are now.
Also on the north wall, on top of some of the rustic frames, is an older painting of a bishop. He is shown inside a fancy "fake architectural niche."
The south wall is divided into two rows of seven rectangles, like boxes. In the top row, there seem to be pictures of the seven deadly sins. In the row below, there's a matching series of seven corporal works of mercy (good deeds). This was a common theme in medieval wall paintings.
In the Llangar paintings, each of the seven deadly sins seems to be shown by a person riding an animal. Only three churches in Britain use this idea: Llangar, Hardwick, Cambridgeshire, and Imber, Wiltshire. Like many old wall paintings, large parts of the Llangar paintings are gone or covered up. In some scenes, you can still see the riders' hats and the animals, but the riders themselves are unclear. They might have been damaged on purpose.
Later Paintings and Messages
Other paintings around the church were made after the Reformation. This was when the older medieval images, which were no longer accepted, were covered up. The most noticeable and newest painting is a large skeleton figure of Death. It was painted in the 1700s to remind people that everyone eventually dies.
The classical arch frame on the north wall has the words of Gweddi'r Arglwydd, which is the Lord's Prayer in Welsh. These texts on the walls show a change after the Reformation. Churches started focusing more on words and less on images. This matches how the church's inside layout changed, moving focus from the altar to the pulpit.
Why Some Walls Have No Paintings
There are no paintings on the two end walls. This is because these walls had problems and were rebuilt around 1615–1620. The south porch was also added then. The west wall has even been rebuilt twice since that time.
The paintings on the two long walls show that these walls have stayed the same since the very first paintings were made. These walls also show how tricky it is to deal with many layers of paint in the same spot. The paintings were carefully preserved in 1991. This work revealed many images from different time periods. Experts had to decide which layers of paint to keep and which older paintings to uncover, even if it meant covering up newer ones.
Cadw Guardianship: Protecting the Past
Llangar Church is a "Guardianship monument." This means that Cadw is now in charge of looking after the church building. Before, it was part of the St Asaph Diocese of the Church in Wales. The church can still hold two services a year.
Responsibility for Llangar passed to the Secretary of State for Wales (Cadw's earlier name) in 1967. A project to study and protect the church began in 1974. Archaeologists, led by Ron Shoesmith, dug under the stone floor. They didn't find any evidence of the church being there before the 14th century. The building was made stable and weatherproof. In 1991, the work to uncover and preserve the wall paintings was finished. Visitors can see the building by arranging a visit with Cadw staff at Rug Chapel.
See also
- Grade I listed buildings in Denbighshire
- List of Cadw properties
- List of Scheduled Monuments in Denbighshire
Images for kids
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Llangar Church
