St Mary's church is located on the north side of the A548, about 100m west of the Sandbank Road crossroads. It is set back from the road in a rectangular churchyard used as a cemetery. The church was built in Early Decorated style in 1872-3 to the design of George Edmund Street, a pre-eminent Victorian architect, for Robert Bamford Hesketh of Gwrych Castle, as part of a group with the Vicarage and Church School, to serve the newly formed parish of Towyn. It is constructed of polygonal, pick-dressed local Carboniferous Limestone with Bath oolite dressings and blue and green slate roof laid in a lozenge pattern. It consists of a tall nave with aisle on north side only but with clerestory, a crossing tower with saddleback roof over the chancel bay, and a short east sanctuary. The main entrance porch, gabled, is on the south, and the vestry is at right angles on the north side linking to the vicarage. The tower is in three stages with traceried bell openings to east and west, and to the north-east a vice turret with conical roof rising only to the ringing chamber.
Inside, the walls are of exposed coursed rubble with darker grey dressings, under an open waggon roof of pitch pine with five crown post trusses. The choir, below the tower, is vaulted, and to the north is an organ chamber where the vice turret begins. Nave and aisle are separated by an arcade of four bays. The chancel is floored with encaustic paving by Godwin of Lugwardine; those of the nave were replaced after the incursion by the sea in 1990. Fittings and furnishings include a figured reredos of the Crucifixion by Earp, now painted, and to either side, later painted and gilded metal panels of saints set within a wall arcade; an octagonal limestone font raised on a step; a circular limestone pulpit; and a brass lectern. The church retains a fine set of furnishings and fittings designed by Street including a three-bay oak screen to the chancel, and oak choir stalls. Stained glass in the east window is by Street and Hardman.
Sources:
Cadw Listing description.
E.Hubbard, Buildings of Wales: Clwyd (1986), p.286-7.

RCAHMW, 9 October 2015