Church of St Ceinwen

The Church of St Ceinwen is a Decorated style church, likely dating to the 13th century. It is located within a local setting and comprises a three-bay nave with a west gable bellcote and a southwest gabled porch, a shorter, narrower chancel, and a north vestry. The church is constructed of local rubble masonry with freestone dressings, now covered by a modern slate roof with stone copings.

The chancel window features three trefoil-headed lights with cusped tracery within a pointed-arched frame, topped with a hoodmould. The nave windows are similarly pointed arched, containing a mixture of one, two, and three trefoil-headed lights. Offset angled buttresses flank both the east and west gables; the west gable also has a single gabled bellcote. Entry to the church is through the southwest porch, where both the outer and inner doorways are pointed-arched and chamfered. The inner doorway has a boarded door fitted with ornate strap hinges. An east-facing wall of the porch contains a mullioned window of three lights. The north vestry has a single rectangular light in its east wall and a small ashlar stack with a decorative helmed cap on its west side.

Inside, the doorway leads directly into the west end of the nave. Above the door, set as a lintel, is a tapering gravestone, likely from the 12th century, displaying a crude cross of four petals within a circle at its head and a shaft decorated with a key pattern. To the right of the door is part of another gravestone, dating from between the 9th and 11th centuries, incised with a shaft and cross paty within a circle. The nave’s roof is a five-bay structure with exposed rafters and arched-braced collared trusses, featuring chamfered soffits and braces carried down to chamfered wallposts supported on plain corbels. The chancel has a similarly detailed two-bay roof, is raised by three steps, and boasts a two-centred, chamfered chancel arch with lambs-tongue stops. The sanctuary is also raised by three steps and contains a moulded sanctuary rail resting on plain supports and cusp-shaped brackets.

The church’s fittings are largely from the 19th century. A C19 octagonal pulpit sits on a shaped plinth with a moulded cornice; each face displays paired recessed panels, further adorned with lambs-tongue stops to chamfered angles. A C12 circular font with five panels – four showing patterns of interlaced work and one blank – is located at the west end of the nave. Memorials include a stone slab dedicated to Reverend William Griffith, who died in 1752, an inscribed stone dated 1641 and 1653, and a marble war memorial commemorating the men of the parish who died in the First World War.