Church of St Cein

Church of St Cein

This is a substantial parish church of medieval origin, substantially rebuilt and restored in the 19th century. It comprises a square late medieval west tower, south porch, aisleless nave, and narrower, lower chancel, all built of sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings. The walls are mostly snecked, particularly to the chancel, though some older fabric has been reused. Thick slate roofs with crucifix finials and gable parapets cover the building, with weathercoursing of an earlier roof visible on the east face of the tower and east gable end of the nave. The eaves are overhanging.

The large square west tower is of three stages dating to the late medieval period. It features a deep corbelled and crenellated parapet with ashlar dressings and two louvred belfry windows with stopped labels to square heads. On the west face, vertically laid stones form a cambered arch that appears externally as a relieving arch but internally suggests a blocked opening. Lower down is a relieving arch over a 3-light window with cusped ogee and stilted label ornament. Below this is a medieval chamfered segmental arched doorway with a boarded door. The south face has a lean-to vice stair projection with small rectangular windows, with no masonry break between this and the south side of the nave.

The nave has two 3-light windows on each side; one on each side has ogee tracery. Those on the south side flank the porch. All these windows are part of 19th-century refenestration. The south side also retains a 2-light square-headed window originally lighting the rood. The nave gable end to the north has a 19th-century octagonal stone chimney stack.

The south porch is gabled with a deeply moulded arch and contains a figure of St Cein in a canopied niche. The inner doorway is a semicircular arched late medieval opening.

The chancel has on its south side a pointed and moulded arched priest's door with a dated monogram to strapwork. To the right are 2-light square-headed windows. The east bay has similar single-light windows to north and south, all with carved headstops, one dated and bearing an armorial shield. The east window is of 3 lights with a pointed arch and similar headstops.

The church stands in a rectangular churchyard fronted on the east by a rubble drystone wall with an entrance to the southeast comprising two tall stone piers with pyramidal caps and decorative double wrought iron gates. The churchyard contains headstones from the 18th century, table tombs from the 19th century, and a number of unusual coffin-shaped kerb graves, including one grave with a rare surviving metal cover that is separately listed.

The interior is largely limewashed with an open timber roof. The nave has five bays with arched brace trusses, three of which are original, with bosses and moulded capitals at the tops of the springers over stone corbels. The floor is stone flagged. The stripped low rounded chancel arch has thin voussoirs and is flanked by squints. On the north side is a tall segmental-headed rood loft door, with stairs rising from the chancel. The former rood screen was unusually partly supported by projecting masonry built out below impost level.

The three-bay chancel has matching roof trusses and crenellated wall plates. The eastern bay is boarded. Low pointed rere-arches to the windows feature fleuron ornament. The sedilia has splayed corners with broad foliation. A tall piscina with drain on a semi-octagonal projection is present. These features are all part of the Halliday restoration.

The west arch is taller and pointed with a stripped finish. The tower is vaulted beneath the bell stage with holes for the bellropes. The pointed arched doorway to the spiral stone stairs in the stair turret has diagonal chamfer stops.

The church retains 17th to 19th-century monuments to the Jenkins family, one by I Wood of Bristol, and a 17th-century ledger slab in the chancel. Benefaction boards are present. The church contains a 12th-century stone drum font with a replaced base, a Gothic-style organ case, and a Jacobean altar table. The east window was erected by parishioners to Olive Talbot, who financed the restoration.