Church of the Holy Cross

The Church of the Holy Cross is a Grade I listed building featuring local stone walls and slate roofs. It includes a nave with a north porch, a south aisle, a central tower, and a chancel. The northeast choir and Rector’s vestries, which were originally a chantry chapel, are also part of the structure. The windows are of Perpendicular style, many of which were restored or rebuilt during Prichard’s restoration. The north wall of the nave is unbuttressed, while much of the rest of the building is buttressed.

The west nave has five-light windows above a battered base, with a wide roll-moulded chamfered doorway. The north wall of the nave features, from the east end, two windows, a blocked doorway with a niche above, all set within an 1859 gabled porch, and a five-light square-headed Perpendicular window with external traces of possibly lancet window openings on each side. The south wall of the south aisle has three three-light windows, a blocked chamfered doorway, and another three-light window. The square central tower has an inset octagonal castellated parapet, a full-height buttress on the west side, and a semi-circular stair turret on the east side. The choir vestry contains two blocked windows in the north wall and a moulded doorway in the west wall. The east chancel window has five lights, and there are two south chancel windows, each with three lights.

Inside, the nave features an arcade of five bays with plastered walls, a 15th-century wagon roof in the south aisle, and an oak boarded roof from around 1926 in the nave. There are traces of a former west nave gallery and a pulpit from the 1890s. The pointed chancel arch leads to a blocked door for the rood loft stairway. The chancel has a vaulted plaster roof and a two-bay arcade leading to the choir vestry, similar to the nave arcade. Memorials inside include a marble memorial in the nave to David Jenkins Esq of Hensol (died 1664) and his family, an early 19th-century memorial to Richard Bates and family, and an early 17th-century memorial in the south aisle to William Carne of Nash. There is also a tablet in the west chancel to David and Ann Edwardes of Rhyd-y-Gors, Carmarthen, and memorials in the chancel to Sir Robert Rich, who died in 1799, and to the Reverend Thomas Williams, who died in 1783. The church serves as the burial place for Lewis Morgannwg, Richard Meyrick of Cottrell, and Benjamin Heath Malkin.