The church of St Maelog is prominently sited in the centre of the village of Llanfaelog, in a rectangular churchyard used as a cemetery set back from the junction between the A4080 and the road to Bryn Du. It is a nineteenth-century church built to replace the old church of St. Maelog, located on different site within the churchyard. It was built in 1848 in Decorated style to designs of Henry Kennedy of Bangor. It is constructed of rubble masonry with gritstone dressings, slate roofs with stone copings, crosses on the east chancel and porch gable apexes; the east gable of the nave carries the remains of a cross-socket. The church consists of four-bay nave with bellcote on the west gable, gabled south porch, shorter and narrower chancel with gabled north vestry (with an ashlar chimney at the north gable apex) and lean-to extension. Roofs are steeply pitched. The walls are articulated by a plinth and continuous sill band; each nave bay is articulated by a stepped buttress with a further buttress to the centre of the south wall of the chancel and tall buttresses flanking the window in the west gable.
Inside, the nave roof is of nine bays, with exposed rafters and collared trusses with chamfered soffits; braces are carried down to wall posts on plain corbels. The chancel, entered through a chamfered arch, is raised two steps and covered with geometric tiles; the sanctuary is raised by a further three steps, both within the length of the three-bay chancel roof. Some re-ordering was carried out in 2000 by Adam & Frances Voelcker. The west end of the church was separated as a lobby with meeting room above, a glazed upper screen - finely etched by Bill Swann of Porthmadog - maintaining the scale of the church. The upper room is lit through dormer windows.
Fittings and furnishings include a twelfth-century gritstone font (from St Mary Talyllyn) with raised Maltese cross on one face, chevrons on another; sanctuary furniture of moulded oak; and an oak pulpit raised by five curving steps, the top octagonal with deeply recessed facing panels. Stained glass includes some late nineteenth and early twentieth works, including a Pre-raphaelite style window of St. Cecilia, to John Price Roberts, Plas Maelog, d.1857.
Sources:
Cadw Listing description.
R.Haslam, J.Orbach & Adam Voelcker, Buildings of Wales: Gwynedd (2009), p.162.

RCAHMW, 8 January 2016