Church of Saint Jerome

Church of Saint Jerome

This is a parish church built of rubble stone with ashlar dressings, featuring slate roofs with coped gables, crested ridge tiles and cross finials. The building comprises a nave with a west bellcote and south porch, a north transept (also known as the Roch chapel), a smaller south transept, and a chancel.

The windows date largely to 1879 and feature cusped designs with foiled circles in the heads of two and three-light openings, set within stone voussoirs. The west end of the nave has stepped buttressing and contains a 19th-century two-light pointed window beneath a steep-gabled bellcote with a single pointed opening and cross finial. The south porch, also 19th-century, has a pointed entrance with hoodmould, coped gable, cross finial and sloping side buttresses. A pointed door is positioned to the left, with a two-light window to the right marking the site of a former door. The south transept has a coped gable, cross finial and a similar south-facing window. The east side contains a blocked square opening with dripstone and relieving arch. The chancel's south side has a 19th-century cusped lancet, possibly within a blocked former door, and a blocked lancet in the adjacent angle. A 19th-century three-light pointed window with a sexfoil in the head lights the east end. The north side of the nave has a 19th-century two-light window at the position of a former door. The north transept contains no west-facing windows; its east end preserves a medieval opening from the 14th to early 15th century with ogee-headed lights and an ogee quatrefoil in the head, now much eroded. A diagonal squint light is positioned in the angle to the chancel. The chancel north side has two 19th-century cusped lancets.

The walls are plastered with segmental-pointed heads to window reveals and roofs on corbels, all later 19th-century work. The north and south windows occupy positions of original opposed doors. The finest surviving medieval structural feature is the two-bay arcade to the north transept, dating to the 15th century, with pointed arches featuring an inner chamfer and outer recessed convex moulding. The central octagonal pier carries a moulded capital of two convex mouldings separated by a concave one. The eastern arch is cut away for the squint; its arch end displays a carved shield bearing horizontal bars (Barri family heraldry) and two smaller shields each bearing a diagonal bar (bend sinister). Above the arcade on the transept side are two pointed arches supporting the thicker wall above.

The north transept has a high 19th-century roof. Its east wall contains a carved canopied piscina of crude but elaborate detail, with a half-round pedestal replacing the original, which now rests on the adjacent window sill. This original piece features three blank shields to the front and interlinked pairs of circles in a band down each side, separated by holly leaves (an illustration in Fenton's 2nd edition shows also a base with blank shields). The curved bowl front has three blank shields; the niche contains three shields on convex-moulded jambs and a triangular head with two shields on each convex-moulded edge. The projecting canopy is flat-topped with cusped ogee arches on all three faces, blank shields in the spandrels and a crude finial in relief against the wall above—tall and thin with an ogee-pointed panel at its base and diminutive crockets. Within the niche is a shelf with a reeded edge. The east wall also displays a very fine pair of 14th-century tomb recesses with ogee arches, heavy cusping and crockets, each topped by a large crude finial. Thin short piers with bases and shallow quatrefoils on square caps flank the centre and sides, with tall crocketted finials above. The continuous tomb chest bears a band of diagonally-set pointed quatrefoils, a thin band of paired linked circles with plant motifs between each pair, and a top band of shields in pointed quatrefoils separated by piers with tiny roundels. The effigies comprise a female figure to the left (moved here from the chancel since 1811) in a draped cloak with feet on an animal, and a finely carved knight in armour to the right. The knight wears chain-mail to the neck, plate armour to the arms, a short surcoat and shield; his hand rests on his sword, his legs are crossed with plate armour, and his mailed spurred feet rest on a lion. His helmed head is supported by a large helmet crested with a bird.

The south transept has a pointed arch to a plastered pointed medieval vault, with a low corbel on the east wall in the corner. The chancel has a broad pointed plain arch and a three-bay 19th-century roof on stone corbels with conical pendants. The north window has a moulded stone sill that may be medieval.

The medieval font is square, splayed below to a large round stem, standing on a 19th-century base (it is described as scalloped in an 1856 record). An ornate later 19th-century ashlar pulpit has an open octagonal front of Gothic columns with marble shafts; one bay features a marble angel beneath a cusped pointed arch supporting a bookrest, with an ashlar column base and flying steps. Pine pews have front kneelers pierced with quatrefoils; pine stalls feature similar pierced sexfoils. Twentieth-century altar rails reuse two later 19th-century wrought iron standards. An organ of 1891 stands in the north transept.

Memorials include a plaque with a dove to the Wilson family dated to 1893, a brass plaque to E G Williams who died at Durbungah in 1891, and marble neo-Grec plaques to Augusta Williams who died at Calcutta in 1872 and to the family of Reverend T. Williams who died in 1882, the latter created by T. Morgan & Son of Haverfordwest.

The east window dates to 1908 and bears the inscription "Feed My Sheep".

Two incised stones are located by the south transept: one carries an incised cross with the head set in a circle with cusps between the arms; the other has a head only with more pronounced cusping.