Parish Church of St Illtyd including churchyard walls and gatepiers

Parish Church of St Illtyd

This is a long, single-cell church of rubble construction with cyclopean blocks to the lower walls. The roof is covered in graded slate with overlapping coping stones to kneelered gable parapets. The western gable has a plain rubble bell-cote with a triangular-headed bell opening and a gablet above inscribed with the date 1834. Four disengaged corbels sit beneath the bell-cote with the initials G H V carved between them. A tall arched window with chamfered reveals and a returned label occupies the main wall.

The northern porch dates to the 18th century and features an arched entrance with dressed stone voussoirs. Flanking this are 18th-century arched windows with similar voussoirs and leaded cross-windows with fan glazing to the upper sections; a further similar window is positioned to the far left. Immediately to the east of the porch is an inscribed stone set under the eaves bearing the initials RE and OG (for churchwardens) and the date 1686.

The eastern end of the church has a small mid-19th-century 3-light window in Perpendicular style with cusped heads and a Tudor arch. On the southern side is a 17th-century rubble porch with a rendered gable face and slate bargeboards, topped with 20th-century wooden doors with coloured leads in the top light. Three arched 18th-century windows run along the south side, and two rubble gabled dormers with coped and kneelered details and square-headed leaded casements are also present.

The churchyard is enclosed by rubble walls with 19th-century slate coping. These walls curve inward opposite the south porch and terminate in tall, early 19th-century gatepiers of ashlar with pyramidal capping and plain cornices. Early 20th-century gates with hoop-suspended lighting complete the boundary.

The interior comprises six bays with no division between nave and chancel. The roof is a late 15th-century arch-braced collar truss design featuring half-round moulding to the trusses, trenched and chamfered purlins, and two tiers of cusped, chamfered windbraces. Early 18th-century dado panelling to the walls was created from repositioned box pews during the 1899 restoration. The south porch contains a 17th-century 2-bay collar truss roof and houses a repositioned Early Medieval plain cylindrical font.

The south entrance has a late 15th-century oak plank door set within a chamfered Tudor arch, retaining original chevron-decorated hinges and contemporary blind applied tracery-heads relating to chamfered shafts forming three fields, though the latter are 19th-century replacements. The northern entrance has a similar arched design with a studded oak door inscribed on the reverse with "IR RR 1779" (for churchwardens). The floor is of plain Victorian tiles with oak pews. A plain contemporary octagonal font is present, alongside a smaller loose octagonal font bearing the date 1689.

At the western end hangs a large hatchment to Sir Robert Vaughan of Nannau, the third baronet (died 1859). An Early Medieval inscribed stone with a carved foot print and a dedication to Kenyrick, a pilgrim, is also housed here. The tall western window contains a stained glass panel depicting St Illtyd and commemorates the return of captain Henry Romer Lee from the Boer War. On the south wall is a marble mural monument to Sir Robert Howel Vaughan of Hengwrt and Nannau, Bart., died 1792.

An 1899 octagonal oak pulpit reuses late 15th to late 17th-century screen and box pew panels, with earlier examples featuring pierced tracery and later ones bearing lozenge decoration; it is topped with an octagonal domed sounding board. Similar panels are mounted to the east wall, some dated 1692 with the initials RNM. Late 17th-century barley-twist oak altar rails are present. The eastern window features a Perpendicular-style 19th-century crucifixion group in stained glass. Numerous small engraved brass plaques, chiefly dating to the early 19th century, are mounted to the walls.