St Mary's church is located on the north side of the road junction in the hamlet of Talachddu, set in a sub-rectangular walled churchyard used as a cemetery. The church has origins in the fifteenth century or earlier but was restored in 1862-3 to designs of Thomas Nicholson of Hereford, and is constructed of squared rubble stone with concrete tiled roofs and wooden bell-turret. A small church, it consists of nave, chancel, south porch, lean-to north vestry and large square bell-turret. A west tower noted in 1809 had been demolished before 1861. The porch is medieval with restored chamfered pointed arch, an arch-braced roof (c.1500) and stone seats. The timber belfry has four louvred panels with blank cusped heads each side and boarding below, and a bell-cast pyramid roof.
The interior is floored with stone flags under medieval pannelled barrel ceilings. Windows are mixed: the nave north and south windows are of sixteenth-century date with paired Tudor-headed lights; the north windows are inserted into earlier fabric; the vestry is lit through a cusped lancet.
Furnishings are mostly simple dating from 1864: pitch-pine pews, timber pulpit with Gothic panels on grey stone octagonal shaft, chancel stalls with pierced tracery to back and fleur-de-lys bench ends, and wrought iron altar rails with twisted standards and scrolls. The font is of late thirteenth-century date consisting of a triple-clustered column with a shallow round bowl.
Sources:
Extracts from Cadw listing database.
R.Scourfield and R.Haslam, Buildings of Wales: Powys (2013, p.567.

RCAHMW, 17 July 2017