Church of St Teilo

Church of St Teilo

This is a Grade II* listed church built in Ecclesiologically correct Early English style. It consists of a nave with a west bellcote and south porch, together with a lower, narrower chancel.

The building is constructed from snecked limestone with sandstone dressings, and has steep slate roofs with coped gables. The four-bay nave features stepped buttresses with gablets, a moulded corbel table, and lancet windows with sill and impost bands. The porch is positioned to the left of centre. Its south wall is ashlar with stopped chamfers to the angles, and contains a doorway with a lancet arch, one order of attached shafts with stiff-leaf capitals and a hood mould with head stops. Small narrow lights pierce the side walls. The south doorway to the nave has a two-centred head and is fitted with a boarded door decorated with ornate strap hinges.

The chancel comprises two bays with stepped buttresses and lancet windows featuring hood moulds and a continuous sill band. A priest's door, positioned left of centre, has a lancet head and hood mould, with a boarded and ribbed door hung on strap hinges. Above this doorway is a stone sundial dated 1720, carried on corbels dated 1923. The east window consists of three stepped lancets beneath a continuous hood mould with foliage stops. A small round opening beneath the apex contains a trefoil window. The north side of the chancel features a gabled vestry flanked by lancets in the chancel wall, with a lean-to on the west side covering steps down to a vestry undercroft.

The nave's north wall mirrors the south side. The west wall contains a doorway beneath a two-centred head with hood mould and one order of attached shafts with moulded capitals. The west door is boarded with ornate strap hinges. Above are two lancets with continuous hood mould and head stops. Between these windows is a head corbel beneath a tall wall shaft with a stiff-leaf capital, which supports the octagonal bellcote. The bell frame is open and contains two bells. Above a dog-tooth frieze sits an octagonal spirelet crowned with a gilded weathervane.

Internally, the nave has a pointed arched-brace roof with one tier of wind braces. The principals stand on wall shafts with stylised stiff-leaf corbels. The west wall contains a similar but larger wall shaft supporting the bellcote. The chancel arch features polygonal responds with stiff-leaf capitals and a hollow-chamfered two-centred arch. The chancel roof resembles the nave but has two tiers of wind braces and shorter wall shafts with head stops beneath central trusses. Both nave and chancel have sill bands. The rere arch to the east window contains free-standing clustered shafts in the centre flanked by plainer attached shafts, with a continuous hood mould.

The floor is laid with patterned tiles by Minton. A 13th-century plain, tub-shaped octagonal font stands on a square base, mounted on a stepped plinth with blue patterned tiles. Beside the font is a former stoup. A circular pulpit, positioned in the nave on a thin white stone pedestal with panelling and detached marble shafts, dominates the interior. The chancel contains the shaft of a pillar piscina beneath a 19th-century stone shelf in the north wall, with a scalloped bowl from another Norman piscina beside it. A doorway connecting to the vestry, inserted in the north wall of the chancel with a lancet head and roll moulding, was brought from Newcastle vicarage in 1963.

The church contains significant stained glass. William Wailes, working contemporaneously with the church's construction, created glass depicting the Resurrection in the east window and Miracles of Christ in the south and north windows. The west window contains similar glass depicting Saints Teilo and Dewi. The nave's north wall features glass commemorating the First World War, created by A.J. Davies of the Bromsgrove Guild and by Jones and Willis, dated 1925.