Church of St Mellon

Church of St Mellon

This is a medieval church of unusual plan, comprising a long nave with a south porch and south tower positioned immediately adjacent and partly overlapping, a south chapel, a narrow chancel, and a north chapel. The building is constructed of rubble in variously hued stone with ashlar dressings and slate roofs. Most roof pitches are laid with small slates and terminate in cruciform apex finials. All walls are battered, with the tower and east chancel wall showing the most pronounced battering.

The west end of the nave contains a three-light window with reticulated tracery, featuring a hoodmould with foliage stops and a stone head above the apex. A low pointed-arched west doorway is set within an altered opening with a relieving arch above, and retains elaborate iron hinges on its boarded door. The south-west nave has a three-light window with Perpendicular tracery. All such windows in this position have deep, almost Tudor-arched hoodmoulds.

The south porch is a deep gabled structure, positioned immediately adjacent to the nave and partly overlapping it. Remnants of render survive on its exterior. The doorway is moulded with a hoodmould, the stops slightly swept out. The porch interior contains a wooden barrel roof supported by three principal ribs on stone corbels. Stone benches line the interior, and a holy water stoup is positioned to the right of the inner moulded doorway.

Immediately to the east of the porch, separated only by a drainage channel, stands the four-storey church tower. It is built without buttresses and has an embattled parapet with two string courses. The belfry contains paired cusped louvred lights under relieving arches, and small single light rectangular-headed openings appear at two levels. The former ground floor pointed-arched doorway is blocked but incorporates a three-light window.

The south chapel abuts the tower and has three three-light Perpendicular windows with a narrow priests' doorway surmounted by a stone head. A stone bench at the south-east corner bears an inscription dated 1796 commemorating Evan Phillips who erected it. The chapel's east window is a three-light example with reticulated tracery and foliage stops to its hoodmould.

The chancel has a similar but larger three-light east window and a small south-east window of two trefoil-headed lights within ogees. The north chapel is lit by a large rectangular three-light east window with a chamfered surround and mullion, placed under a rough relieving arch. Large stone brackets support the gutters at the eaves. The north chapel also has a three-light Perpendicular window on its north side and a narrow doorway. The north nave contains three similar Perpendicular windows whose hoodmoulds almost overlap the eaves, a shallow bay at the east end for roodloft stairs, and a wide blocked north doorway with narrow stone voussoirs.

The interior walls are unrendered rubble with ashlar dressings, covered by wagon roofs. The nave has a two-bay south arcade of two-ordered pointed arches with stepped capitals, one bay occupied by the organ and a further blocked bay adjacent to the tower. A blocked north door remains in the nave. Some early bench seating survives with simplified cusped poppy-heads. The font is small, hexagonal and roughly chalice-shaped, with blind tracery panels to its stem. A panelled vestry has been created adjacent to this area.

A pointed roodloft entrance doorway stands at the north-east, with a square-headed former access doorway above it. The chancel arch is unusually wide and pointed, its mouldings sweeping out to the stepped capital. A narrower arch to the north chapel shares the same pier. A nineteenth-century stone pulpit stands in front of the arch. A window opens in the nave apex. The chancel screen is wooden, executed in late medieval style and probably dating to the early twentieth century.

The chancel contains a squint from the north chapel, which houses an early nineteenth-century monument to David Richards of Llanrumney Hall. An asymmetric arch connects to the south chapel, which contains an altar at its east end. Above this, in the east wall, is a niche with a finely wrought foliage corbel but no canopy; the sill appears to incorporate a piscina. Eighteenth and nineteenth-century wall tablets are present in the chancel, including one commemorating members of the David family of St Julian's farm. The east window dates from 1882 and is believed to be the work of Clayton and Bell.

The enriched wallplate supports the wagon roof with shaped ends to its ribs. The tower houses six bells, originally from Chepstow foundry in 1713 and recast in 1913.