Criccieth – Places of Worship

Description

Criccieth – Worship.
St Catherine’s church dates to the beginning of the fourteenth century but there was a religious building in the place from much earlier times. When the town developed as a holiday resort a larger church was needed and St Deiniol’s was built in 1887. This church was closed for worship in 1988 and was converted into residential flats in 1994. St Catherine’s remains open. At first the non-conformist groups held meetings and worshipped at various houses and buildings in the town and around the district. The chapel at Pen y Maes opposite Arfonia Terrace was built in 1791 and rebuilt in 1817. In the stream next to the chapel David Lloyd George was baptised. This church had been a Scotch Baptist congregation, but had broken away to become followers of Alexander Campbell - the Disciples of Christ in 1841. When the new chapel Berea was built on Tanygrisiau Terrace in 1886 the congregation moved here. It joined the mainstream Baptists in 1939. Calvinistic Methodist records show that a chapel (Capel Mawr) was in existence on the main road as early as 1813, although the Religious Census of 1851 suggests that the chapel building was erected in about 1822. Rebuilding was carried out between 1889 – 1900. In 1889 the minister John Owen and
four elders including Richard Owen, David Lloyd George’s father in law, led a secession to build a second chapel (Capel Seion). At first this congregation worshipped at the English Calvinistic Methodist Chapel at the foot of the castle, built in 1879. Amongst the list of subscribers to this chapel were shipmasters, shipping agents and merchants from all over the world, collected by the local ship owner Captain Thomas Williams. The congregation later moved to Capel Seion, built in 1895. Capel Mawr on the High Street closed in 1995 and the congregation joined with Capel Seion, This site was re-named Capel Y Traeth. In 2014 the Independent Capel Jerusalem (built 1868) closed and this congregation now shares Capel y Traeth. Salem Wesleyan Methodist Chapel was first built c.1809, but later rebuilt to the design of Owen Morris Roberts of Porthmadog in 1869. A plaque above the front door states 1901 so further work must have been carried out then. Capel Salem is now an undertaker’s chapel of rest. The Roman Catholic church on Caernarvon Road was built in 1957 for the use of the small Catholic community and visitors. It closed its doors in 1916. Criccieth Family Church formally came into being in May 2000, when a group of Christians in the town began meeting together weekly for worship and Bible teaching. The roots of the church are firmly in the Scripture Union Holiday Club (formerly the CSSM) which has been a feature of the summer in Criccieth since 1903.