St Padarn's church is situated in a prominent position on rising ground above the south side of Stryd Fawr (High Street), in a churchyard of irregular shape approached from the north through iron gates in a rubblestone wall. It is a high Victorian church built on virgin ground in 1884-5 in a late Early English style to designs of architect Arthur Baker, assisted by his cousin Herbert Baker as clerk of works. It was completed in 1914-15 through the addition of the lady chapel in complimentary style by Harold Hughes (later author of Churches of Old Snowdonia) for Trevor Hughes, squire of Glascoed. It is constructed of snecked, rough-faced local rubblestone with pink Runcorn sandstone ashlar dressings, slate roofs with stepped ashlar coping and foliated and Celtic crosses to gables, and is heavily buttressed throughout. The plan is cruciform, the church dominated by its central tower. Of this only the belfry stage is visible externally, its two-louvred pointed windows to each face and a pyramidal slate roof with a decorative wrought-iron weathervane behind the embattled parapet. Entrance is through a north gabled porch which is within a larger partially hip-roofed structure projecting from the north wall of the nave. The south wall of the nave is flanked by the lady chapel in the form of a full-length lean-to aisle. The chancel has a full-height lean-to organ chamber on the north, the south wall largely obscured by a lower parallel vestry entered through a pointed doorway. Above the porch is a circular window containing a cinquefoil within it but the church is otherwise mostly lit through lancets variously grouped.
The interior is well-proportioned, large and spacious. Exposed walls are of stone rubble with banded stonework and pink sandstone ashlar to arches, windows and doorways. The nave has a panelled wagon roof with arch bracing and pendants, similar roofs to the transepts. Both crossing and chancel roofs have cusping to archbraces, the latter more heavily ribbed than others. Flooring is wood- block to the nave and transepts, quarry tiles to the raised chancel, and encaustic tiles to the sanctuary. Fittings include a late medieval font, from the old church at Nant Peris (NPRN 43803), and altar rails and panelled reredos continued to the side walls of the sanctuary as a 1914-18 war memorial.
Sources:
Cadw Listing description.
R.Haslam, J.Orbach & Adam Voelcker, Buildings of Wales: Gwynedd (2009), p.303-4.

RCAHMW, 19 February 2016