All Saints
Sinan, Denbighshire
A simple, spiritual building with a very special, peaceful atmosphere, where you can sit, reflect and pray as you take in the glorious views along the North Wales coast and the Clwydian range.
The church built in in 1860/64 is in the Early English style of the early 13th century from designs of Mr B Ferrey FSA. Its plan is cruciform and consists of an apse, nave and two transepts, with a porch on the south wall. The north transept is screened off as a vestry and the south as the organ chamber.
The material, even the marble steps and columns of the chancel with their foliated capitals, is of native limestone, quarried and worked on the spot, save only the groined roof of the chancel, which is of Bath, and the pulpit of Ruabon stone. The reredos of Florentine marble is in three panels, representing the Virgin Mary with her dead Son surrounded by a cross. This is a copy of the original, which is to be found at “Albergo dei Poveri”, the “Inn of the Poor” in Genoa.
The font, of white Carrara marble, representing a kneeling angel bearing a scallop shell, emblematic of Christian Pilgrimage, is a copy of that in Copenhagen cathedral by Thorwaldsen, and was executed by his pupil Stein. St Mary has fine examples of stained glass by Lavers and Barraud.
Amongst other notable features within the church are five brass candle standards given by the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland. In the sanctuary, there is a chair dating from 1637, and a late-medieval two-seat sedilia with figurative elbow knops, but minus their misericords. The sedilla is said to have been originally in Ruthin.
The two-manual, twelve stop organ, was built in Huddersfield by Peter Conacher and Co.
St Mary’s, Cefn, may be regarded as, in great measure, a memorial to Col Herbert Watkin Williams-Wynn, who got the task under way, but was killed in an accident on June 21st 1862.