For some time we’ve wondered what was depicted in the top quatrefoil of the west window at St Mary’s, Llanfair Kilgeddin. It wasn’t until we erected a scaffold to mend some storm damage that we saw this medieval, apparitional, fractured face of Christ looking out at us.
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When most people think of this Monmouthshire church, they think of the Arts & Crafts sgraffito murals, in which scenes from the hymn of creation flow over the walls.
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So thorough were the two 19th-century restorations, first by John Dando Sedding and then by Heywood Sumner, that it’s hard to find traces of the medieval church.
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Some early fabric survives in its chancel roof and some window tracery, the font may be from an early church or maybe, like the 15th-century chancel screen, it came from elsewhere. There’s a jolly jumble of medieval stained glass – tucked into the north chancel window.
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I assume it was Sedding who set this face high up in the west window overlooking the congregation during his work in the 1870s.
In the 1890s Heywood Sumner created a colossal Christ in Majesty in sgraffito and mosaic over the chancel arch – facing congregants from the front.
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