Church of St Edern

The Church of St Edern is a parish church, dating from the 15th century, constructed of rubble stone with ashlar dressings and slate roofs. It features coped gables and crested ridge tiles. The church consists of a nave, a west bellcote, a south porch, transepts, and a chancel. It is characterized by uncusped lancet windows. The west front of the nave has low, splayed buttresses on either side, two lancet windows with hoodmoulds, and a bellcote featuring a single pointed opening, a steep coped gable, and a small cross on the gable crest. There are two pairs of lancets on the north side, and on the south side, a porch and two single lancets. The porch has a double-chamfered ashlar pointed entry with a hoodmould and a chamfered plinth, with stone benches, a quarry-tile floor, and a pointed door within. The south transept has paired lancets to the west, a single lancet to the east, and a two-light plate-traceried window to the south with a cinquefoil in the head and a hoodmould. The north transept is similar, but the sides have only a single lancet to the west, and the north window has a quatrefoil in its head. The chancel has a lean-to vestry on the north side with a single east lancet. The east end of the chancel features a large, three-light ashlar east window with stepped lancets, cusping, a trefoil in the head of the central light, and spandrels with small trefoils in circles; there is also a single south lancet.

The interior has plastered, whitewashed walls with ashlar dressings, mainly on the window heads and the broad, two-chamfered chancel arch, the inner order resting on moulded, corbelled capitals. The roofs incorporate some reused 15th-century arch-braced trusses with cusped struts, alongside 19th-century copies. There is a five-bay roof to the nave and three-bay roofs to each transept; two nave trusses, two in the north transept, and one in the south transept are medieval. The crossing has broad arch-braced principals, and the chancel has an arch-braced rafter roof. The church contains open back bench pews, a simple pine pulpit with panelled sides, one step up to the chancel, simple pine reading desks on either side, and an altar rail on iron and brass uprights. A pointed north door leads to the vestry. A richly coloured east window, dating from around 1868, depicts the Sermon on the Mount and was given by the widow and children of the Reverend J. P. Jones Parry, who served as vicar for 43 years; the window features coloured glass borders and inserts in the transept windows. A well-designed 19th-century bowl font is present, featuring a carved band around its upper section in a 12th-century style, a red-stone squat shaft with diagonal wave mouldings on a moulded ashlar base. A 19th-century brass plaque commemorates members of the Griffith family of Cefn Amwlch, Tudweiliog, who are buried at Edern in the 17th and 18th centuries.