Across the bridge and we are in Bettws-y-Coed: “Bettws in the Wood.” Exactly how that name fits the situation of the place is instantly seen. It occupies the floor of a tiny valley hemmed in by great hills covered with trees, chiefly dwarf oaks. Through this valley runs the Conway, joined in its midst by the Llugwy. Close by this confluence still remains the old church, the “Bettws” that preceded the village itself, and whence the village obtains its name. Bettws is the Cymric corruption of the Anglo-Saxon bÊd-hÛs, or “house of prayer”; signifying a minor chapelry; and the ancient and quite humble building fully bears out that character. When a branch railway was made to Bettws from Llandudno some twenty years ago, the station was built beside the old church, robbing it of not a little of that quiet seclusion which belongs to the spot chosen by David Cox as the scene of his “Welsh Funeral.” Since then the primitive little place that served the simple needs of many generations of Welsh folk has been found neither good enough nor large enough for the fine flower of civilisation that now makes holiday at Bettws. Just as the long, long row of hotels and lodging-houses has replaced the original whitewashed granite cottages of the village, so a quite new, quite magnificent, and absolutely cathedral-like church in the Transitional-Norman style has been erected to serve the needs of the modern resort. It is an altogether admirable building, too, and could contain, perhaps, ten or twelve churches of the size of the old one; but——!

The old church remains, but little used. One enters the churchyard over a rugged stile of granite, and passing through a grave of yews of a peculiarly sombre shade—the yews that Cox painted—comes upon the neglected building with reverence. Across the way, the railway trucks are slamming and hanging in the goods-yard, and the shunters swearing in Welsh; in the “Royal Oak” and the other hotels the visitors are feeding as they would in London; on the road the waggonettes are plying with their loads to the Fairy Glen or the Swallow Waterfall: only in this little churchyard is there complete solitude.

The building is plain to barrenness within, and is more like some secular room than a church. The sole monument, or inscription, of any period, is the stone effigy of Grufyd ap Davyd GÔch, with his nose duly knocked off; his hands in prayer:—