St Twrog’s Church, Maentwrog, Blaenau Ffestiniog

The boulder outside St Twrog’s Church testifies to a story of superhuman spiritual strength, a curious artefact of Celtic tradition and a diverting pilgrim destination

Highlights

• Stone of St Twrog

St Twrog is a Celtic superhero, smashing a pagan temple with his divinely given powers. Tradition holds that the saint picked up a huge boulder on the top of a nearby hill and hurled it down onto a pagan temple here, crushing the altar.

Maentwrog means ‘the stone of Twrog’, referring to the rock which can still be seen in the churchyard, at the foot of the tower by the porch. It is waist-high, a rounded boulder with indentations along the edge said to be imprints left by the saint’s fingers during his superhuman struggle.

The bare bones of the legend are probably true enough: he founded a church here by converting a former pagan site to Christian use, some time in the 6th century. The church is still dedicated to the saint, and has a carving of him on the pulpit. Nothing other than the stone survives from the early church. The current structure was built in 1814 on medieval foundations.

Some claim the saint is also buried here, underneath his rounded stone. A more likely location is the summit of Mynydd y Cilgwyn, 15 miles to the north-west. A late medieval history says he is one of four saintly brothers active in this part of Wales.

Directions‍

St Twrog’s Church, A496, Maentwrog, near Ffestiniog LL41 4HN

W3W: repaid.afraid.mimes

GPS: 52.9456N 3.9896W‍

The church is on the western side of Maentwrog, rather tucked away down a narrow alleyway opposite the village war memorial. It was open when I visited.