Church of St. Brynach

The Church of St. Brynach is a medieval parish church, largely dating from the 13th and 15th centuries, with subsequent alterations. It is constructed of roughly coursed local limestone rubble, with the tower masonry being more carefully squared, and has Welsh slate roofs. The church comprises a nave, chancel, south porch, and a west tower.

The south side of the nave features a simple gabled porch without windows, containing a pointed arch doorway with a plank door added in the early 20th century. To the left of the porch is a likely 16th-century three-light window with a dripmould. To the right is an oak three-light window, made in the 17th-century style and inserted by Sir Clough Caroe. The chancel, which has a lower roofline than the nave and a simple finish, contains a blocked window and a plain rectangular window with a hollow chamfer to its frame. There is no window on the east gable, although signs suggest a three-light window existed there in the past. A plain window and a 17th-century two-light window are found on the north wall of the chancel. The north wall of the nave has a projection indicating the former location of a rood stair and a mid-20th-century three-light window, also a Caroe insertion, beside it. The wall is otherwise blank, but shows evidence of a blocked north doorway.

The west tower is a massive, unbuttressed two-stage square structure. A projecting stair turret rises on the south side to the level between the tower stages. A blocked pointed arch doorway is set within a larger relieving arch on the west face, above which is a rectangular window with plain recesses on either side. Below this window are three plaques documenting repairs, one dated 1629. Three two-light bell-chamber openings, with hollow chamfers, are present; the east face is blocked, while the west face contains an earlier medieval-style opening. A plain parapet sits on corbels, with a pitched roof behind and corner water-spouts on the north and south faces.

The church is rendered and limewashed throughout, except where fragments of wall-painting survive. The interior is plain, featuring a lime-ash floor and rare, early medieval stone benches around the west end. A cut chancel arch and a tower arch, both with simple impost mouldings and likely dating from the 13th century, are present. A fine 15th-century roof comprises arch-braced collar principals, with three tiers of curved windbraces (except for the end bays), two tiers of troughed purlins, a renewed central collar purlin, and a brattished wallplate. The chancel roof is Victorian, with an arch-braced collar beam truss with a roll mould. The font is dated 1745 and features a small tub on a baluster base. There are early 20th-century benches, likely from around 1920, in a Victorian Gothic style, as well as a Victorian Gothic pulpit and an early 20th-century altar table. A memorial to Reginald Thomas Deare, unsigned but attributed to J Wood of Bristol, is also present.