St Garmon's church is located on level ground in a low rubblestone-walled rectangular churchyard used, and extended, as a cemetery, on the north side of the A 4085. It is a small mid-nineteenth-century church built to replace a medieval church which lay close by to the east. It was built in 1841-2 in a simplified Romanesque style to designs of George Alexander. It is constructed of regularly-coursed and dressed rubblestone blocks with ashlar dressings, and slate roofs with coped verges and kneelers to the nave. The church consists of nave and chancel in one, a small semi-circular apse, west bellcote, and central entrance in the west gable wall. The nave is in three bays with two stepped buttresses to the north and south walls and diagonal buttresses to the corners. The church is lit through two-light round-arched cast-iron latticed windows with plain chamfered shafts and capitals in round-headed openings linked by continuous impost banding. The doorway is round-headed with the date "1842" to the top and narrow round-headed windows to either side linked by continuous impost band. The simple interior with slate flooring has a collar and tie beam roof structure with boarding to the rafters. A half-height screen forms a small internal lobby at the west end. A half-height screen forms a small internal lobby at the west end. Fittings and furnishings (probably from the old church) include a font consisting of circular bowl on an octagonal column, dated 1614; a seventeenth-century communion table with twentieth-century top; and eighteenth-century wall tablets
Sources:
RCAHMW, Caernarvonshire Inventory II (Central), 33 No. 780.
Cadw Listing description.
R.Haslam, J.Orbach & Adam Voelcker, Buildings of Wales: Gwynedd (2009), p.266.
RCAHMW, 12 February 2016
Resources
DownloadTypeSourceDescription
application/pdfGeneral Digital Donations CollectionTranscripts of a number of letters relating to the 1841 rebuild of the church at Betws Garmon, found among the rare books collection held at Aberystwyth University and transcribed by William Hines, August 2019.