page_title: St Mary's Church, Pentraeth
section_title: Assessment
hierarchical_section_title: St Mary's Church, Pentraeth / Assessment
caption_attribution_description: English: St Mary's Church, Pentraeth, Anglesey, Wales, shown in about 1774
context_page_description: St Mary's Church, Pentraeth is a small medieval parish church in the village of Pentraeth, in Anglesey, north Wales. The date of construction is unknown, but is probably from some time between the 12th to 14th centuries. A church dedicated to St Mary was recorded here in 1254, but there is a tradition that there was an older church dedicated to St Geraint, an early British saint. Some medieval stonework remains in three walls of the building. A chapel was added to the south side in the 16th or 17th century. The church was altered and refurbished during the 19th century, including an extensive rebuilding by Henry Kennedy, the architect for the Diocese of Bangor, in 1882. St Mary's is still used for worship by the Church in Wales, and is one of three churches in a combined parish. Its conservation is specifically included in the aims of a Chester-based charity that promotes health and the arts in Anglesey and the north-west of England.
context_section_description: St Mary's has national recognition and statutory protection from alteration as it has been designated as a Grade II listed building – the lowest of the three grades of listing, designating "buildings of special interest, which warrant every effort being made to preserve them". It was given this status on 30 January 1968, and has been listed because it is "a predominantly late 19th-century church which retains some Medieval fabric". Cadw (the Welsh Government body responsible for the built heritage of Wales and for the inclusion of Welsh buildings on the statutory lists) also notes "some fine 18th-century and 19th-century memorials."
  The 18th-century writer Francis Grose, who wrote a multi-volume guide to the antiquities of England and Wales, included St Mary'a in his survey of Anglesey, one of only two churches on the island that he featured (the other being St Cybi's, Holyhead). He said that this "little edifice is more remarkable for its simplicity, and the beauty of the rural scene by which it is surrounded, than for any matters of antiquity or curiosity in its construction, or contained within its walls". The Welsh antiquarian Angharad Llwyd and the writer Samuel Lewis (both writing in the 19th century before the 1882 alterations) each described St Mary's as a "small neat edifice". They particularly noted the internal and external monuments to members of various local families.
  Writing in 1847, the clergyman and antiquarian Harry Longueville Jones said that St Mary's was "remarkable for being in one of the sweetest spots in the isle of Anglesey" The interior, he said, was "greatly blocked up with pews", but was in "excellent repair", with "a degree of neatness and comfort about it quite unusual in this district." The roof timbers, he commented, were "closely set together, light in section, but producing a good effect." The Welsh politician and church historian Sir Stephen Glynne visited a couple of years later, in 1849. He described St Mary's as being in a "pretty" situation, "surrounded by trees". He noted the "fair" east window and the "rude timber framework" of the roof. In 2006, a guide to the churches of Anglesey noted that the red sandstone used in the windows and in the bellcote was showing signs of "severe weathering" in places.
caption: An 18th-century view, included in Francis Grose's guide to the antiquities of Anglesey
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