Church of St Michael and All Angels

Church of St Michael and All Angels

This is a Grade I listed church of medieval origins substantially rebuilt in the 19th century. The external walls date from 1883 and are constructed of Llanymynech limestone with Grinshill freestone dressings, replacing the original medieval Alderbury-type sandstone dressings. The roof is slate with red clayware ridges.

The church comprises a nave and north aisle of equal length, each with independent pitched roofs, the aisle being slightly narrower. A massive tower with varied buttresses dominates the composition, with a stair projection at the northeast corner. The tower rises in three stages to a weatherboarded top and pitched roof of two stages. A 19th-century south porch with moulded timber-framed front incorporates tracery.

The windows are all 19th-century work replicating the pattern of the single surviving early 14th-century window with quatrefoil head in the north aisle and the 3-light east window. A 15th-century 3-light window remains in the east wall of the chancel. An early 13th-century priest's door features large filleted bowtell jambs and head. The tower contains one inserted early 14th-century window on the south side and irregularly placed small lights.

The interior preserves important medieval carpentry. The nave has an arch-braced collar beam roof with windbraces, restored in 1883. The north aisle roof is arch-braced with collar and cusped windbraces and two tiers of purlins. The east end has a trussed rafter barrel roof springing lower. The walls are plastered.

A four-bay round-arch arcade to the north aisle is set on circular columns with round capitals enriched on the west respond with dog-tooth decoration. The single-order nave arcade develops as a two-order chamfered round arch order against the chancel, with increasing richness including ballflowers and mouldings towards the east. The bases of a similar arcade appear externally on the south side. A fine 14th-century piscina is located at the east end of the north aisle.

The upper stage of the tower is timber-framed with very long tension braces. The bellframe is freestanding with three bays, probably 17th-century, with straight bracing to the centre posts. It carries three bells, one dated 1679 and another inscribed "God Save the Church of England".

The east window contains a crucifixion by Kempe, dating to around 1871.

The 19th-century fittings include a font at the west end of the aisle, an octagonal panelled form on a tapering base raised over two steps. An oak pulpit, part octagonal and raised on stone steps, incorporates some late medieval work. The altar rail is a heavy round pole with terminals on iron supports. The reredos is of Grinshill stone, panelled with brattished cornice. Choir stalls of Riga pine have a front range with book stand.

Monuments line the walls. At the west end of the north aisle is a fine monument comprising a casket flanked by reading and writing children, with a pedestal above supporting a full portrait bust with coloured arms set against a grey stone field, erected to Richard Jones of Black Hall, later Greenwich, purser in the Royal Navy and benefactor, in 1788. Additional monuments include an oval white tablet to William Broome (1786), an oval white on grey to Hugh Maxwell (1810, date altered), and a draped urn over tablet with coved corners, guttae, arms and palms by Booby of Bath to John Owen Herbert (1824). A white tablet on black commemorates Rev. John Jenkins [Ifor Ceri], patriot and chaplain to the Duke of Clarence (1829). A Gothic stone aedicule marks the grave of Frances Hensley, and a small white marble tablet honours John Pugh. A tablet erected by Thomas Burgess, Bishop of St David's in 1818, commemorates the rededication of the church by Giraldus Cambrensis, made by Mainwaring of Carmarthen.

Two early monuments on the return wall include a slab to Joseph Bulkeley and wife (1738 and 1739), and a slab incised with a merry putto to the Revd and learned John Catlyn, vicar (1717), who established a school in Kerry in 1714. On the west wall of the nave are a Gothic aedicule by E. Clarke, London, to Harriet and Walter Long (1847); a white on grey marble monument showing a figure reading with a dove descending in light by F. Tyler, London, to Margaretta Herbert of Forest (1838); and a white marble widow reclining on a broken column by C. Lewis, Cheltenham, to John Herbert of Dolforgan (1807), together with three other small tablets. Beneath the tower stands an oval limestone wall monument with border over a cornice to Thomas Powell of Mainllwyd (1778).

Herbert hatchments hang on the north wall of the aisle.

Within the churchyard approximately 10 metres southwest of the tower stands an 18th or early 19th-century sundial with an octagonal fluted shaft raised on a ball with stylised leaf decoration, mounted on a two-step octagonal base.