DescriptionThis medieval church was significantly altered in the eighteenth century and restored in 1902-4 by C. Ford Whitcombe of Worcester. It is built of red sandstone and roofed with two different types of slate ? thick greyish slates on the nave and chancel and north Wales slates on the tower. The church consists of a nave, chancel with projecting bays on the north and south, north and south centrally-placed porches, and a short, broad western tower. The northern porch is larger and has been converted into a vestry. Its door has been blocked and replaced by an early-twentieth-century lancet. There is also a blocked priest's door in the south wall of the chancel. There is an empty bellcote on the eastern gable of the nave, between the nave and the chancel. The fifteenth-century tower was lowered sometime between 1740 and 1770, as a 1740 estate map shows a taller, low-battlemented tower and the extant bell frame bears the date 1770. There is also a projecting stair of thirty-five steps which has been roofed over. The tower is capped with a nineteenth-century close-eaved half-hipped roof and has a two-light flat-topped traceried window which was replaced in 1904. Inside the church there are two small carved medieval corbels, one over each porch ? a mitred head over the south and a female head over the north. To the right of the vestry is a recess containing a fourteenth-century incised tomb slab with an effigy of a head in relief on a cushion below which is a cross or sword. The font is similar in form to that at Rudbaxton (Nprn 308935) with a twentieth-century bowl on a medieval scalloped base. Other notable fittings include the carved-oak reredos produced by John Coates-Carter in 1927.
(Sources: Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire: County of Pembroke (RCAHMW: 1925) Vol. II: 121-22; Cadw site report)
A.N.Coward, RCAHMW, 13.04.2018