Church of St George

Cadw's description

Location

The parish church of Trefor stands alongside the S road into the village off the A499 Caernarfon to Pwllheli road.

History

The church was designed in a Victorian 'Early English' style by George Farren, engineer and quarry manager for the Welsh Granite Co, operators of Yr Eifl quarry. He was a pupil of Joseph Bonomi of London, and had worked on the Surrey Docks, London, and Helois Lighthouse, Guernsey. The church was commenced in 1879 and opened in 1881 and was well appointed for the time, including a gas machine for heating. Farren, who introduced central heating to the school in 1878, and street lighting to the village in 1898, stood for parliament as part of an anti-Gladstone coalition in July 1886.

Exterior

Snecked squared Trefor granite with limestone and courses of red and blue bricks, flush as hood bands over the windows. Blue slate roof patterned with green slates and a trefoiled blue ridge tiles. Coped gables. It consists of a nave, W porch, and a short 3-sided apsidal chancel, and carries a slender SE tower. Vestry at right angles on the N side. Five lancet windows to the nave, all with wide external splays, and a corbelled outstepping eaves course, and patterned leaded glazing. The tower is rectangular in plan, with square buttresses rising to a corbel table at the base of the bell stage, with lancet openings with brick surrounds. Crenellated parapet.

Interior

The wide nave has an open roof of 5 bays defined by double collar trusses, the collars supporting 3 trefoiled infill panels and king posts. Painted stone supporting wall corbels. The walls are plastered, with a boarded dado. Four steps rise to the presbytery beneath a stone chancel arch. The chancel is of 2 bays with an apsidal end, all quarry tiled, and it has a similar open roof. Open aumbrey recesses each side. The chancel windows have C19 glass. High set W window.

Fittings: altar table on stone legs, and a C19 arcaded communion rail. The pulpit is of pine, octagonal and accessed from the chancel. Font of polished granite, dated 1901, a circular bowl with rounded lip, set on a stem and base. Two banks of pine pews.

Monuments: (a) brasses to the Farren family, benefactors of the church, and (b) a black marble tablet to Tommy Owen, d.1971.

Reason for designation

Included as of special interest for being a church built by the local employer, the Welsh Granite Co, for the use of its employees and their families forming the community of Trefor, and designed personally by its chief engineer, who had received an architectural training with a major architect in London, and who later worked on major engineering projects of the day.