Llandudwen Church
Llandudwen, Gwynedd
This stunning ancient church, founded in the 5th century as a pilgrimage site to St Tudwen, is a place of solitude and spiritual refuge and is open all year round.
In fact Penllech was a rebuilding in 1840, by Samuel Jones, albeit one of nigh dateless simplicity.
St Mary feels like a simple rustic late Georgian interior complete with some box pewing and two coffin biers propped up at the west end.
The most surprising content is the octagonal sounding board, or tester, to the pulpit which has an eight ray sunburst on its lower face.
'But generally the aura is one of generations of Welsh farming stock offering a special but unpretentious gift to their God. And it's all still there. The run of hatpegs on both sides of the nave, the two coffin biers stored upright against the wall at the back, the blacksmith's handiwork in the door furniture, the open benches in the nave and the six boxpews jostling together at the High End, nearest the pulpit and the altar, all the seating painted in its original light grey' says Matthew Saunders in his Saving Churches.