Nid oes gennych resi chwilio datblygedig. Ychwanegwch un trwy glicio ar y botwm '+ Ychwanegu Rhes'

St Mary The Virgin's Church

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NPRN153
Cyfeirnod MapST07SE
Cyfeirnod GridST0645674019
Awdurdod Unedol (Lleol)Bro Morgannwg
Hen SirGlamorgan
CymunedSt Nicholas and Bonvilston
Math O SafleEGLWYS
CyfnodÔl-Ganoloesol
Disgrifiad
This church has twelfth-century origins with a fifteenth-century tower, but was apparently in a ruinous state before being heavily renovated in 1863 by the Cardiff architects Messrs Prichard and Seddon who reconstructed the nave, chancel, north transept, and porch in Early English style. They appear to have adhered closely to the original plans, as is borne out in the slight northward inclination of the chancel relative to the alignment of the nave (`weeping? chancel) so that the eastern window is not aligned with the chancel arch. The church consists of chancel, nave, a southern porch on the western end of the nave, a northern transept on eastern end of the chancel, and a western tower. The chancel and nave are roofed with slated pitched roofs carried on corbelled eaves. The southern gable of the porch and eastern gables of the nave and chancel all have `Celtic? cross finials. The chancel is lit on the eastern end by a large three-light window with a hoodmould with headstops and on the south side by a single lancet with a cusped head and hoodmould and a two-light window with a pierced trefoil and a hoodmould over it. The transept is lit by a nineteenth-century rose window and has a slender pepperpot chimney rising on its east side. The nave is lit on the south side by a pair of two-light trefoil windows with plate tracery and a single lancet with a trefoil. All of these have hoodmoulds with headstops. The porch is lit on both sides by trefoil-headed windows over internal benches. The entrance is flanked by slender pillars with leaf foliage capitals supporting a pointed arch. The tower is topped with an embattled parapet. The belfry is lit by pairs of small, sixteenth-century style windows on all four sides, the mullions of which are likely formed from tombstones as they bear inscriptions. On the western side of the tower is a door with a pointed arch above which is a two-light cinquefoil-headed window under a square hoodmould. In the churchyard to the south-east of the porch is a war memorial consisting of a twentieth-century stone cross on a four-stepped medieval base. Internally, the nave and chancel have similar nineteenth-century arch-braced roofs, but the chancel arch is fifteenth-century, consisting of continuous moulding springing from three moulded abbreviated capitals. The choir stalls, alter rails, pulpit, and lectern of carved oak were all designed by Mr J. Wippell of Exeter and installed in 1908 as a memorial to Joseph Benjamin Brain and his wife. The pulpit and choir stalls are a matching set of an unusual design, displaying an eighteenth-century-style mixture of classical motifs of Victorian execution. Inside the north transept, the rose window is almost entirely obscured by the nineteenth-century organ which fills the space. On the south-west wall of the nave, above the entrance to the belfry staircase, is an early (possibly twelfth-century or earlier) carved stone plaque displaying a man wearing girdle and knee-high boots within a rounded arch between vine leaves and with a scroll at its base.

(Sources: Orrin, Medieval Churches of the Vale of Glamorgan (Cowbridge: 1988), pp. 109-13; Cadw site report)
A.N. Coward, RCAHMW, 16.04.2018