Parish Church of St. Martin

Parish Church of St. Martin

This is a substantial parish church comprising a 4-bay aisless nave with a crossing tower and transepts, a 3-bay chancel, and a north-east vestry and organ chamber added in 1855. The church is built of rubble masonry, partly coursed, with freestone gable parapets, crucifix finials, and window dressings. It features stepped and angle buttresses, stringcourses, plinths, and voussoir lintels throughout. The roofs are steeply pitched in modern slate, swept at the eaves.

The east window is a 4-light Perpendicular design with a hood mould. The vestry and organ chamber on the east wall has a curvilinear triangular window with trefoiled double cusped mouchettes, with earlier Gothic windows to the north side. The south-east porch displays stellar pattern windows and a decorated 3-light window. The 2-stage tower, lowered in 1873, features an advanced and taller stair turret known as the 'King's Seat' with crenellated and corbelled parapets. Each face of the bell stage has 2 louvred openings. The transepts have 2-light windows and a cinquefoil window to the north gable, with an advanced Victorian doorway to the south. The nave contains similar glazing to the transepts, a closed low porch to the north with side moulded arch and foliated stops below a multicusped roundel, and a gated south-west porch that retains a stoup below a figure of St David. West of this porch is a faded pedimented monument set into the wall to a mother and her 8 children, dated 1705. The west window is a 5-light Perpendicular design.

Internally, the north-west angle of the stair turret projects into the nave from the east side. The crossing has acutely pointed arches with a previous roof pitch visible to the west and a low 11th-century cylindrical column to the south-west angle. A blocked squint retains a 10th or 11th-century Celtic cross. The south transept contains a credence and a fluted 14th-century piscina. An ornate rood screen and loft dating to 1909 occupies the crossing, with the former rood loft door blocked by a commemorative tablet. A similar pulpit dates to 1925. The chancel retains a 14th-century reredos and restored piscina and sedilia.

The organ, installed in 1821, was made by W. G. Vowles of Bristol and was the gift of Admiral John Laugharne. It features a timber casing with foliage and cusping over gilded pipes. The font is a Victorian octagonal design with an ornate suspended canopy. Most of the glass is Victorian, with the exception of a 14th-century head depicting Edward III in the east window of the nave's north wall. The bells were cast in 1729 by Abraham Rudhall of Gloucester.

The church contains a particularly fine collection of monuments, primarily from the 18th and 19th centuries. The nave holds several notable examples, including a classical monument with lunettes on the north wall to Admiral John Laugharne (died 1819) and his wife, and a pedimented monument with volutes to Arthur Bevan on the south wall dated 6 March 1649 and signed "B.n Palmer Fec". A marble tablet of 1821 above the inner porch depicts a classical scene. A monument to Dylan Thomas is also present in the nave. The south wall of the nave displays a large unsigned canvas painting of Jeremiah by Benjamin West from the 1780s, one of a set of eight originally made for George III's Royal Chapel at Windsor Castle and now the only example remaining in Britain.

The north transept, known as Palmer's aisle, retains a 14th-century recumbent effigy of a monk in a double cusped recess, along with several 18th-century wall tablets and one dated 1690. The south transept and chancel contain 18th and 19th-century floor and wall monuments, including two dated 1700. At the east end are three variously pedimented monuments with classical and Baroque detail, one surmounted by a coat of arms and another ornamented with skulls and putti. The south-west porch retains two further examples from the late 17th century, one with a strapwork architrave.

The north porch is blocked by a wood carving of St Martin made by the Lang family of Oberammergau, brought to the church in 1866. Above this carving is a small painted panel of George III's arms signed "Joseph Lewis painter".