An historic chapel built on the Rhug estate by the Royalist officer Colonel William Salesbury which survived the protestant parliamentarian reformation intact.


Rhug is one of very few 17th-century churches to avoid the ‘restorers’ of the Victorian Gothic revival. It was the private chapel of Colonel William Salesbury, affectionately known as ‘Hen Hosanau Gleision’ or Old Blue Stockings.
He was a staunch Royalist who defended nearby Denbigh Castle for six bitter months during the Civil War before reluctantly surrendering to parliamentary forces.

While others embraced simpler forms of worship, he prayed here in high church splendour.

Old Blue Stockings died at the age of 80 having lived just long enough to see the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.