Listed Buildings : Parish Church of St Giles, Wrexham

The Parish Church externally principally dates from the late 15th Century. It was built in several phases culminating in the building of the tower c.1506-1520.

The interior incorporates elements of a 14th Century church including the arcades. However, the most famous association relates to Elihu Yale, born in Boston 1649. He was benefactor to Wrexham Church and Yale University in America. He was buried in Wrexham Churchyard in 1721. The church was the subject of a series of restorations during the 19th Century and 20th Century. The first of these was in 1867 to the plans of Benjamin Ferrey; further restorations followed in 1898 and again in 1903-04, by HA Prothero.

The exterior consists of a west tower, nave with clerestory and two aisles with integral west porches, and an apsidal chancel. It is of coursed and squared stone with leaded roofs, and a six stage west tower with clasping buttresses, all enriched with blind traceried arcading and quatrefoil bands. Outer and central pilasters have canopied niches carrying statues. The Church of St Giles is especially famous for its tower, a reproduction of which was erected at Yale University in the 1920s.


The interior incorporates stained glass and fine monuments by L F Roubiliac 1702 1762, an English Sculptor of French birth. It has dramatic funerary monuments. It has group value with the graves in the graveyard, sundial, tomb of Elihu Yale, St Giles Churchyard gates and is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.


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