Church of St Donat

The Church of St Donat is a medieval parish church, largely dating to the 13th and 14th centuries, built primarily of roughly coursed rubble lias limestone with dressings of Sutton stone, sandstone, and Bath stone from Victorian restorations. It has Welsh slate roofs. The church comprises a nave, chancel, a south porch, and a west tower.

The south porch, centrally positioned on the nave’s south wall, has a coped gable with an apex cross. It features a partly rebuilt, roughly pointed arch entrance and blind return walls. To the left of the entrance is a restored 2-light window with a cusped trefoil head, and to the right is a later 3-light window, the central light being taller. The nave has coped gables and an east apex cross. The chancel has a priest’s door with a hollow chamfered pointed head and a 2-light window with cusped heads and a dripmould. A coped east gable holds a small cross. The north wall of the chancel is blind, with a projection indicating the former location of a rood stair, now partially obscured by a recent boarded fence. The nave’s north wall contains two 2-light windows matching those on the south side.

The unbuttressed west tower has a strongly battered base and is divided into two stages by a dripband. The tower likely has an early 16th-century west door with a slightly pointed head with a double wave mould, now fitted with a late 20th-century plank double door. A small, trefoil-headed light was added on the south wall in 1891; the north wall is blind. The second stage features 2-light bell openings with pierced stone grilles on the north and south walls, and single lights on the east and west walls. The tower has an embattled parapet supported by corbels, with crisper stonework in the wall immediately below.

The interior is plastered and painted, with a few exposed stone features. The nave and chancel retain fine medieval roofs: the nave roof is a 5-bay arch braced collar beam roof with two tiers of curved windbraces, brattished wallplates, and a central collar purlin. The chancel roof is a 3-bay design with brattished wallplates but without windbraces, also featuring a central collar purlin. The chancel arch has been reconstructed, and the roodloft stair altered. A good Transitional style font is present, likely dating to the 13th century. A benefactions board from 1774 is also visible, along with several 18th- and 19th-century memorial inscriptions. The fittings are mostly Victorian and later; the original pews have been replaced with chairs. A pulpit, dated 1907 and made by G E Halliday, completes the interior.