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The Church of St Martin of Tours, Llay |
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St Martin's Church, looking west
The Church of St Martin of Tours is situated right in the centre of the North Wales village of Llay, which grew up at the turn of the twentieth century as the result of the sinking of Llay Main Colliery. Llay is close to the large border town of Wrexham, and we are about five miles from the English border – our nearest big city is Chester, although we are a part of the Deanery of Gresford in The Diocese of St Asaph - and very proud of it!
Our claim to fame as a parish is that the Church of St Martin of Tours was the first to be built in Wales after The Church in Wales was disestablished in 1920. The foundation stone was laid on 11 November 1923 and the church was solemnly consecrated at 3.00pm on Saturday 21 February 1925 by the first Archbishop of Wales, Dr Alfred George Edwards. It was built as the third daughter church of the neighbouring ancient parish of Gresford.
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For about the first twenty years of its life the Curates of Gresford cared for it; but on 13 December 1944 St Martin’s Church was created the Parish Church of Llay and the Curate, the Revd Charles Williams became the first Vicar of Llay. On St Luke's Day, 18th October 2004, the Rev'd Pauline Walker B.A. was Instituted and Inducted as the seventh Vicar of the Parish of Llay.
St Martin's is a busy place! There is generally always something going on. And the busier we are, the more our enthusiasm seems to grow. In 2003 we were extremely active in raising funds to renew our church pipe organ. Work on the organ was completed in time for our Mothering Sunday Service on 21 March 2004, and the first CD from St Martin's was released a couple of months later. 2004 was also significant since it marked the sixtieth anniversary of Llay becoming an independent parish.
But since Church is about people and not things, we have a very lively and active Mission Group whose work is to focus our attention on a needy world, and included in a growing number of projects that have interested our Parish just lately, are the local air ambulance, Sight Savers International, The Leprosy Mission, local hospices (Nightingale House and Hope House [Wales]) and Christian Aid. Each year we have a Christingle Service just before Christmas and funds raised from that go to the Archbishop of Wales' Children's Fund.
We hope that you will enjoy our website - but more especially we hope that you will come and join us as we seek to praise and magnify the name of our Lord Jesus!
If you are looking for a warm and welcoming church family in this area of Wales, the invitation is to you - COME AND JOIN US!!
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