St Michael's Church

St Michael's Church

This small church of rough T-shaped plan is constructed of rubble with a boulder plinth to the south side and is roofed with old slatestone featuring oversailing eaves and exposed rafter ends. The gables are coped and kneelered, with a gable cross marking the north transept projection. The west gable contains a 19th-century rubble bellcote with a pointed-arched bell opening and triangular coped head.

The south side displays the original simple pointed-arched entrance to the left, fitted with recessed 19th-century boarded and studded doors. To the right is a two-light wooden mullioned leaded window with cusped heads to the lights and chamfered wooden jambs, followed by a similar single-light window beyond. A small, low gabled vestry addition projects flush with the east end, featuring small flush buttresses to the gable face and a simple cusped single-light wooden window.

The east window is of three lights with wooden cusped heads and chamfered jambs to the outer lights and a triangular-headed central light; it has a returned label with a raised triangular central section. The west and north gable windows are similar in design but of two lights, with multi-cusped heads and an inverted quatrefoil light to the top centre. The transept has a corresponding window to the west return and a single-light window to the east return; a ribbed boarded door to the right of the north gable has a stopped-chamfered doorcase.

The interior features scribed, rendered walls and slate-flagged floors. The ceiling comprises barrel-vaulted lath and plaster, intersecting in a plain groin vault at the centre, with plain stopped-chamfered tie beams to the west and east ends, two to each.

The furnishings include simple softwood fitted pews of around 1843, with panelled backs and decorative ogee bench ends, positioned in the centre of the transept, the majority of the south wall and the western section of the north wall. Contemporary pine altar rails feature cusped, conjoined lozenge decoration. A composite mid-19th-century pulpit and reading desk was made up from 16th and 17th-century panelling and carved elements. The panelled pulpit incorporates early 16th-century linenfold panels and 17th-century plain panels with applied carved rosettes, while the reading desk features similar plain panelling, arcaded and foliate elements, and includes an inscribed date of 1697 together with the initials IOW. Both have sections of Salomonic column of late 17th-century date attached to the corners.

A font of around 1200 shows Transitional styling, with a square basin featuring chamfered sides and pointed and round-arched arcading; the main faces carry segmental relief carving with chevron and foliate decoration, perhaps recarved. It has a plain base and later pillar.

On the north side of the chancel is a large pointed-arched tomb recess of first-half 14th-century type, with continuous hollow chamfer. Within is a fine over-life-sized stone effigy of Gryffydd ap Dafydd Goch, a local knight who campaigned under the Black Prince during the Hundred Years' War. The effigy dates to around 1370-1380 and was originally intended for a chest tomb. It has been cut to fit its present position in the recess and rests on plain, later stone blocks. Whether it always occupied this recess, which is stylistically slightly earlier, remains uncertain, though no alternative context is readily apparent.

The tracery lights of the east and west windows contain fragments of stained and painted glass, many of Medieval date.