St Sadwrn, Henllan

St Sadwrn’s is a Grade II* Church in Wales parish church on Church Street, Henllan, Denbighshire, in the Diocese of St Asaph, a single-cell church with a rare detached medieval belfry on a rock outcrop at the churchyard’s north-east corner.

Overview

Cadw records a Celtic llan associated with St Sadwrn from the sixth or seventh century; Ecclesia de Henlan appears in the 1291 Taxatio. The present building is probably of late thirteenth- or fourteenth-century origin, with a large Perpendicular east window of the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. It was extensively rebuilt in 1807–8, when Y-tracery Gothic windows were inserted, and restored in 1878–79 by Richard Lloyd Williams of Denbigh, who added a south porch and vestry and remodelled the west end. Walls are limestone rubble with sandstone and limestone dressings under a slate roof. A medieval octagonal sandstone cross shaft stands beside the porch steps.

The interior is a continuous nave and chancel with a barrel-vaulted pine ceiling. Primary work includes the north doorway (now in the vestry) and a small medieval piscina. Cadw lists the church II* as a largely early nineteenth-century preaching box that still incorporates substantial late medieval fabric. The detached belfry (separately listed Grade II*, Cadw 1073) is a four-stage limestone tower, probably of the first half of the fourteenth century, sited high so the bells could be heard across a formerly extensive parish.

Further Information

• Cadw listed building 1071
• Cadw: detached belfry tower 1073