Church of St Issui, Partrishow

Church of St Issui, Partrishow

A simple Gothic church comprising a nave and chancel, with a south porch and west chapel known as Eglwys y Bedd. The walls are of random rubble with prominent quoins, battered at the base, and the building is roofed with stone tiles. The chapel roof has a steep pitch and was rebuilt in the early twentieth century at a slightly lower level than before, with the earlier pitch line marked by drip stones visible in the nave's west wall. The nave is finished with a wooden cornice below the eaves.

The south porch is positioned on the west side of the nave, topped with a coped gable and a cross on the ridge. The south doorway has a two-centred head with a continuous chamfer and broach stops. Small chamfered flat-headed openings appear in each side wall. To the left of the porch is an early twentieth-century two-light window with round-headed lights. To the right is a continuous stone bench facing a preaching cross, and a three-light Tudor window with a hood mould. Higher up on the right is a rood loft light in a dressed surround.

The chancel is narrower than the nave and has a stone seat against the south wall, similar to that in the nave but interrupted by a priest's doorway to the right of centre, which has a renewed boarded door with strap hinges. Small windows in dressed surrounds flank the doorway. The east window is two-light with a hood mould, and to its left is an early nineteenth-century memorial tablet. The north side of both chancel and nave shows substantial traces of limewash but no windows. The nave contains a shallow outshut on its north side housing the rood stair, dated to around 1500. The west wall of the nave is where the chapel sits, lower and offset to the south. Above and to the left in this wall is a square-headed window with iron barring. A west bellcote has a coped gable with a cross at the apex and two bells in openings with segmental heads.

The chapel, or Eglwys y Bedd, features a fourteenth-century doorway offset to the left in its south wall, with a two-centred head, continuous chamfer, and a renewed boarded and ribbed door. To its right is a trefoiled lancet. A plain lancet is set in the west wall, which has a stone stack in its gable.

The porch interior contains an early twentieth-century roof with bench seats in the west and east walls and a small fifteenth-century stoup. The south doorway has a Tudor head and a boarded and ribbed door with strap hinges and studs. The nave is finished with a celled wagon roof with embossed ribs and a moulded cornice. A doorway in the north wall of the nave, with a Tudor head, leads to the rood loft. The chancel arch, now largely obscured by the later rood screen, has polygonal responds of the early fifteenth century with moulded capitals and a two-centred arch with two orders of chamfers. The chancel has a ribbed ceiling with billeted cornice and tie beams, the latter by Caröe.

The church contains a varied collection of internal fittings and fixtures spanning a long period and demonstrating significant changes in liturgical practice. Pre-Reformation stone altars with consecration crosses stand to the right and left in front of the chancel arch. Above these altars rises the fine rood screen of around 1500, partly restored in 1908–9, executed in Welsh Marches style and dominating the interior. As it was built over the earlier stone altars, the screen has a plain panelled dado. The central doorway has a pierced shallow triangular head (the doors are now missing) flanked by five lights with pierced tracery, the outer lights being wider above the altars. The much-renewed coving is ribbed and embossed. The bressumer displays three tiers of foliage trails, the uppermost a vine trail with wyverns at the ends biting the leaves. The loft balustrade consists of panelled muntins and panels pierced with delicate Perpendicular tracery, above which runs a cornice of flattened quatrefoils and brattishing.

The walls are plastered and bear paintings and texts from both pre-Reformation and post-Reformation periods. The nave's west wall contains a pre-Reformation memento mori showing a skeleton holding aloft an hourglass, spade and knife, rendered in red ochre. The nave's north wall displays a large, much-perished seventeenth-century Royal Arms with a contemporary Creed to its right. The south wall bears a seventeenth-century Ten Commandments. Above the south doorway is another illegible image. Further small texts and fragments appear on the north and south walls.

The font dates to around 1055 and consists of a round bowl set on a later pedestal. The bowl bears a roll moulding around the rim terminating in leaves, and around the top runs an inscription reading MENHIR ME FECIT I[N] TE [M] PORE GENILLIN, meaning "made in the time of Cynhillin", lord of Ystrad Yw in the mid-eleventh century. A seventeenth-century polygonal pulpit has plain panelling. The chancel contains altar rails prescribed by Archbishop Laud in the 1630s, fitted with fret-cut balusters. Several eighteenth-century memorial tablets, many by the Brute family, are present.

The west chapel has a separate entrance and an arched-brace roof that has been restored. At its east end stands a pre-Reformation stone altar offset to the right, with a niche to its left featuring a cinquefoil head and two steps leading up to it, now empty but clearly designed to house an image. A flat-headed opening in a dressed surround above the altar has iron bars and modern glazing.