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Inside St Mary's Church survives a wall painting known as “The Works of Mercy,” depicting the medieval devotional theme of the Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy — feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering strangers and similar charitable acts drawn from Christian teaching. Wall paintings of this kind were common in parish churches before the Reformation, but most were whitewashed over or destroyed in the 16th and 17th centuries, making any survival, even a partial one, unusual.
Like many surviving medieval wall paintings in Britain, the Ruabon fresco was uncovered during later restoration work on the church, when layers of whitewash and plaster applied over the centuries were removed to reveal the earlier decorative scheme beneath. Restoration campaigns of this kind, common across Welsh and English parish churches in the Victorian period, are responsible for most of the medieval wall paintings visible in churches today.
Surviving pre-Reformation wall paintings are genuinely scarce in Wales, which makes the Ruabon example significant well beyond the parish itself: it offers a rare direct glimpse of how an ordinary medieval Welsh congregation would have experienced its parish church, in an era when painted images, not printed text, carried religious teaching to a largely non-literate population.
The fresco is inside St Mary's Church and can be viewed whenever the church is open, typically for Sunday services and by arrangement during the week; check locally for current opening times, as access can vary. There is no charge to view it, though donations toward the church's upkeep are always welcomed.
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