In the north chapel of St Mary's Church lies one of the finest monumental effigies to survive anywhere in Wales: that of John ap Elis Eyton, who died in 1526, shown alongside his wife Elizabeth, who died two years earlier in 1524. John fought on the winning, Tudor side at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, the battle that ended the Wars of the Roses, and was rewarded afterwards with substantial estates in the Ruabon area.
Those estates passed, over succeeding generations, into the hands of the family that would eventually become the Williams Wynn dynasty of Wynnstay — making the Eyton effigy an important physical link between Ruabon's late-medieval landowning families and the estate that dominated the parish for the following four centuries.
Monumental effigies of this period were carved to project status as much as to mark a grave: armour, dress and heraldry were all chosen deliberately, and a couple shown together, as John and Elizabeth are, was itself a statement about lineage and inheritance. Seen alongside the church's later Williams Wynn monuments, including the Rysbrack memorial to Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, 3rd Baronet, the Eyton effigy effectively opens a two-hundred-year sequence of Ruabon's most powerful families, carved in stone inside a single building.
The effigy is inside St Mary's Church and viewable whenever the church is open to visitors, typically for Sunday services and by arrangement during the week; check locally for current opening times. There is no charge to view it, though donations toward the church's upkeep are welcomed.
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