The church of Caergybi is fine. The chancel is Early English, with
a Decorated east window. There was intended to have been a central
tower, and the church was a cross church originally. The tower was
never completed. The porch and side aisle are rich Perpendicular,
and there is some quaint carving outside the south transept; and the
south doorway within the porch is peculiarly rich, though the figure
sculpture is poor. Over the door in a niche is the Trinity, popularly
mistaken for a representation of Maelgwn Gwynedd. A south chapel,
in excellent taste, from the designs of Mr. Harold Hughes, has been
erected, with niches containing statuettes of Cybi and Seiriol. It
contains a recumbent figure of the Hon. William Owen Stanley, good, but
wrongly placed.
The nave has internally on each side an arcade of three Tudor arches.
On the north, the piers are octagonal; on the south, clustered of
four shafts, with general capitals. The arrangement of the transepts
is clumsy, like other Welsh examples, running from north to south,
uninterrupted by arches, and giving the effect of one church set at
right angles to another.
Capel y Llochwyd is on the mountain. Bishop Stanley, in 1830, thus
describes it:--
“A singular fissure, cleaved in a direct line from the summit to the
base, forms, or rather did form, a passage of communication of no
small celebrity in ancient days, and retaining its odour of sanctity
till very recent date. It is known by the name of Ogof Lochwyd,
_ogof_ signifying a cave. A spring of crystal water filtering through
the deep strata formed a deep well at the bottom of this chasm.
Situated just at the higher opening of the gorge was a chapel for
the accommodation of pilgrims called Capel y Llochwyd, of which a
considerable remnant in ruins at the head of this gorge still remains.
Till within sixty years the lonely chapel with its well were from
time unknown the resort of lads and lassies of the island, who, at a
certain annual festival called Suliau y Creiriau, the Sundays of the
Relics, and held during three successive Sundays in July, assembled in
troops to ascertain the contingencies awaiting them. Each diviner into
futurity descended the chasm to the well, and there, if after having
taken a mouthful of holy water and grasped two handfuls of sand from
the charmed font, he or she could accomplish the re-ascent with them
safely, each would obtain the wish of their heart before the close
of the year. About sixty years ago (1770) the chapel was reduced to
ruins, and the well was concealed by filling it with rubbish; but till
twenty years ago the walls, to the height of seven or eight feet,
remained sufficiently entire to convey a tolerable idea of the perfect
building, which is represented to have been a substantial though
rude and primitive edifice, composed of unhewn stones cemented with
mortar, the windows and doorways excepted, which were well wrought by
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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