The Llanwnnog Screen

St Gwynnog's stands in a circular churchyard a mile north of Caersws, and it holds one of the three great surviving rood screens of mid Wales.

The screen

Late fifteenth century, running the width of the church, with a loft above and dense carving throughout — tracery, vine trails, foliage and running ornament.

It belongs to the same tradition as Llananno in the Ithon valley and Llanbister nearby: a group of workshops usually called the Newtown school, working in mid Wales and the Marches around 1500.

The concentration of medieval screens in this district is not matched anywhere else in Britain, and the reason is a combination of two things. The wealth to commission them arrived in the fifteenth century, after the country settled following the Glyndŵr revolt. And the poverty to leave them alone arrived afterwards, so that parishes which would have modernised had they been able simply did not.

What a rood screen was for

It separated the nave, which belonged to the parish, from the chancel, which belonged to the clergy. Above it sat the rood — a crucifix flanked by Mary and John — visible to the whole congregation.

The loft was a working platform, used for lights, for singers, and for access to the rood itself.

At the Reformation the rood was destroyed almost universally, by order. The screens and lofts frequently survived because removing them was expensive and there was no instruction to do so. Then the Victorians removed a great many of the remainder on the grounds that they obstructed the view of the altar.

Anything that came through both is a survivor twice over.

Ceiriog

In the churchyard is the grave of John Ceiriog Hughes, one of the major Welsh lyric poets of the nineteenth century, who died in 1887.

He was manager of the Van Railway and lived at Caersws, which is a combination worth sitting with: a working railway manager in a Montgomeryshire village who was also a national poet. Nineteenth-century Welsh literary culture ran through chapels, eisteddfodau and periodicals rather than through universities, and it produced a great many people like him.

Visiting

Free, normally open, no facilities, limited parking. It is a working church.

Llananno is around twenty miles south on the A483 and Llanbister three miles beyond that. Taking Llanwnnog, Llananno and Llanbister in a day is one of the better small expeditions in Powys and gives you the finest medieval woodwork in Wales in three small buildings.