Llangar Church
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Llangar Church, or All Saints Old Parish Church, Llangar, was formerly the parish church of Llangar with Cynwyd, in the Dee Valley,
Denbighshire Denbighshire ( ; cy, Sir Ddinbych; ) is a county in the north-east of Wales. Its borders differ from the historic county of the same name. This part of Wales contains the country's oldest known evidence of habitation – Pontnewydd (Bontnewy ...
, North Wales. It is now under the guardianship of
Cadw (, a Welsh verbal noun meaning "keeping/preserving") is the historic environment service of the Welsh Government and part of the Tourism and Culture group. works to protect the historic buildings and structures, the landscapes and heritage s ...
, is a
Scheduled Monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...
, and a grade I Listed Building. It is conserved and open to the public as an example of a rural church with medieval wall paintings and largely intact 18th century interior fittings.


History

Documentary sources show a church at Llangar in 1291, but the present building would appear to date to the 15th century (1971 excavations within the church found this to be the earliest identifiable occupancy). The Church has an undivided
nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...
and
chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...
, flagstone floor, and arch-braced roof with 15th century roof trusses.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk Church of All Saints, Cynwyd
/ref> The walls have wall paintings, which probably represent at least 8 different layers of painted schemes. The earliest of these date to the 15th century. The extensive woodwork of the interior includes a gallery, box pews, benches and pulpit, all of which date to the early part of the 18th century. By 1682 the parish was two identifiable townships of Llangar and Cymmer. By 1856 the majority of the population were living even further up that valley, at Cynwyd, and with the church now distant and in poor repair the decision was made to build a new Church, the Church of St John Evangelist, Cynwyd, and abandon the old Church at Llangar, which thus avoided the renovations of the 19th century. The church is now under the guardianship of Cadw, having become very dilapidated in its abandoned state. A major conservation programme was undertaken from 1974.


Roof timbers

The oldest roof trusses are four arch-braced roof trusses forming the four bays in the centre of the Church. At the west end, above the gallery, further trusses were altered in the 17th or 18th century and are divided by a collar-beam truss. At the
chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...
end the roof is panelled over with a barrel shaped ceiling to provide a 'canopy of honour' of 15th century design, although most of the fabric of this is now of later date.


Internal woodwork

The interior of the Church has an extensive range of early eighteenth century wooden fittings, which, because of the subsequent abandonment of the Church, has survived in a largely unaltered state where nineteenth century improvers would have swept them away. There is a large gallery at the west end, accessed by a stone spiral staircase. The gallery has wooden bench seating for a choir, and an enclosed area and a pyramidal music stand. The main body of the Church has box pews, some facing east, others, alongside the pulpit, face south toward the pulpit, indicating the liturgical emphasis toward the pulpit, where the sermons are delivered, rather than the altar, where the
mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...
is celebrated. The pulpit itself is positioned part-way down the south wall, and is a wood-panelled triple combination of pulpit, reading desk and clerk's desk, which is re-worked from 17th century items.


Wall paintings

The north and south walls of the Church hold the fragmentary remains of possibly 8 different layers of wall painting, dating in age from the 15th to 18th centuries. The principle pre-reformation schemes were painted as sequences of paintings running for much of the length of the wall. On the north wall this takes the form of a series of rustic frames, evoking an idea of a wooden framework, which would have held a series of pictures, possibly depicting the passion, although the images within the frames are hard to decipher.Rosewell, Roger (2008) ''Medieval Wall Paintings'', Boydell, , p.303-4 Also on the north wall, overlaying some of the rustic frames, is a pre-reformation painting of an unknown Bishop, occupying an elaborate 'fictive architectural niche'. The south wall is divided into two rows of seven rectangular 'boxes'. In the upper row it appears there were images of personifications of the seven deadly sins, and in the row below a matching series of seven corporal works of mercy. This was a comparatively common theme in late medieval wall paintings, In the Llangar paintings, each of the seven deadly sins appear to be represented through a person riding on the back of an animal. There are only three churches in Britain which use this device, the others being Hardwick, Cambridgeshire and at
Imber Imber is an uninhabited village within the British Army's training area on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England. It lies in an isolated area of the Plain, about west of the A360 road between Tilshead and West Lavington. A linear village, its ...
, Wiltshire. As with many medieval wall paintings, large areas of the Llangar paintings have been lost or obscured. In several of the scenes the rider's hats are still visible, and the animals can still be seen, but the details of the riders are unclear, perhaps defaced. The other paintings, found on various places around the Church, are mainly post-reformation works, painted after the now-unacceptable medieval images had been covered over. Most prominent, and most recent, is a large skeleton figure of Death, painted in the 18th century, serving as a reminder of mortality. The classical arch frame on the north wall had the text of ''Gweddi'r Arglwydd'', the
Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...
in Welsh. The various texts painted on the walls embody a shift from images to words after the Reformation, which matches the shift in focus of the internal layout from the altar to the pulpit. There are no paintings on either of the two end walls, as both of these experienced structural problems and were rebuilt around 1615–1620, when the south porch was also added, and the west wall has been rebuilt twice since then.''Historic Settlement Survey – Denbighshire – 2014 : Llangar''
CPAT. accessed 19 April 2016
This paintings on the two long walls demonstrate that these have remained intact since the time of the earliest of the paintings. They also now show the problem of dealing with multiple painted schemes on the same area of wall. The paintings were conserved in 1991, revealing multiple images from various time periods, and decisions will have been made about when to leave some paint in place, and when to reveal older paintings at the expense of those on top.


Cadw Guardianship

Llangar Church is a 'Guardianship monument', meaning that responsibility for the Church building is now in the hands of
Cadw (, a Welsh verbal noun meaning "keeping/preserving") is the historic environment service of the Welsh Government and part of the Tourism and Culture group. works to protect the historic buildings and structures, the landscapes and heritage s ...
, having been formerly part of St Asaph Diocese of the
Church in Wales The Church in Wales ( cy, Yr Eglwys yng Nghymru) is an Anglicanism, Anglican church in Wales, composed of six dioceses. The Archbishop of Wales does not have a fixed archiepiscopal see, but serves concurrently as one of the six diocesan bishop ...
. There remains a facility for two services a year to be held within the Church. Responsibility for Llangar passed to the Secretary of State for Wales (Cadw's predecessor) in 1967., and a project to investigate and conserve the Church was begun in 1974. Archaeological excavations under the stone floor, led by Ron Shoesmith, found no evidence dating back before the 14th century. The building was stabilised, made weatherproof, and in 1991 a scheme of work to reveal and conserve the wall paintings was completed. The building is accessible to visitors by arrangement with the Cadw staff based at Rug Chapel.cadw.gov.wales Llangar Old Parish Church
/ref>


See also

*
Grade I listed buildings in Denbighshire In the United Kingdom, the term listed building refers to a building or other structure officially designated as being of special architectural, historical, or cultural significance; Grade I structures are those considered to be "buildings of ex ...
* List of Cadw properties * List of Scheduled Monuments in Denbighshire


Publications

*Yates, W N, (1993) ''Guide to Rug Chapel, Llangar Church and Gwydir Uchaf Chapel'', Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments, *Shoesmith, R, (1980), Llangar Church, ''Archaeologia Cambrensis'' : 129 : 64–132


References

{{reflist Cadw Grade I listed churches in Denbighshire Scheduled monuments in Denbighshire