The Church of Ss Eurgain and Peter is situated in the village of Northop (otherwise known as Llaneurgain) Flintshire in North East Wales. This page concerns the decorations, monuments, effigies and stone carvings within and outside the church. Further information is available on Page 1 of St Eurgain and St Peter's Church .

History and architecture:

Inside the church there is a Perpendicular camberbeam roof, some medieval effigies and some 18th Century memorials: There are four medieval effigies set in tomb recesses in the north wall; a marble memorial with an illegible inscription of early 18th or perhaps late 17th Century; marble memorials of 1750, 1768, 1798 and several of 19th Century date, and a brass of 1741/2 and two 19th Century brasses.

Two of the corbels within St Peter's have been claimed as 14th Century: on the north side the most westerly corbel is of a man's head and the fourth from the west end appears to be an eagle or mythological beast with a man's face.

The Tower:

The tower was initiated in the late 15th to 16th Century and was completed to its 98-foot height in 1571. The walls of the tower have four decorated quatrefoil bands and seven string courses. The seventh string course has gargoyles on it, and the walls are topped with battlements and eight crocketed pinnacles. At the ground floor level is a square-framed Tudor doorway with heraldic emblems in the spandrels, and a four-centred archway. Its dressings have been renewed in a light-coloured sandstone in 1965. Above the label is a portcullis design, the armorial badge of the Beaufort family. The hood terminates in Tudor Rose stops as a symbol of Margaret Beaufort, the mother of King Henry VII, and benefactor of the church.
Unlike other "Stanley Churches" in North East Wales (churches reputed to have been bequeathed monies by Margaret Beaufort and her husband Thomas Stanley Earl of Derby following the capturing of the English crown by her son Henry V11) the church has but eight grotesques or carved animals that are limited to hood stops .....two stops to each face of the tower. Other churches including St Giles' Wrexham, St Mary the Virgin Mold, and St Winefride's Holywell appear to be positively over run with the creatures as they scamper around the string courses of the exterior walls.

Edwin ap Gronwy and Other Effigies:

There are several internal tomb recesses set into the interior of the north wall.

Edwin ap Gronwy, Lord of Tegaingl, sometimes Edwyn ap Gronw of Tegengl. His Mother was Ethelfleda the daughter of Edwin Earl of Mercia who was a descendant of Alfred the Great. Edwin Married Ewerydd the Sister of Bleddyn Prince of Powis and had three Sons Owain, Uchdryd & Hywel. Edwin was killed in 1073 and buried at Northop.

Another tomb  recess contains the effigy of a knight in complete armour, possibly Ithel Vychan ap Bleddyn a knight of the 14th century, with the hands crossed upon the breast, and a lion at the feet, the shield bearing a cross with five mullets.

A third monument is to the memory of a female, possibly Lleucu Llwyd, a lady famous for beauty in the 15th Century, whose effigy is well sculptured, having the head protected by an elaborately wrought canopy; from the neck depends a massive chain, and around the whole is a mutilated inscription, of which only the date mcccclxxxii. is legible.