Church of St Edeyrn

Church of St Edeyrn

A medieval church built of limewashed stone with a Welsh slate roof. The building comprises a nave, a slightly lower chancel of equal width, a south porch, and a west tower.

The west tower is the most architecturally prominent feature. It has an embattled moulded parapet and string course. To the east and west are two small pierced stone lights set in a rectangular frame serving the belfry. The north and south sides contain stone louvred belfry openings of two lights with four-centred arched heads. The south side also has small lights with spandrels at two levels, with a sundial above the lower lights. The north side features a stone tiled tower staircase projection. The west side has a moulded pointed arched doorway with a hoodmould, a high plinth, and what may be a date of the 15th century. The tower plinth is battered (sloped inward at the base).

The south porch has battered walls incorporating some unusually large stone blocks and ventilation holes. It features a moulded pointed-arched doorway without capitals and a worn plinth. Inside the porch is a flag floor, stone benches, and an unrendered stone barrel vault. A plain pointed chamfered arched inner door provides access to the nave. Adjacent to the east wall of the porch on the ground is the socket stone of the former churchyard cross.

The south nave wall contains several windows. To the left of the porch is a window of paired cusped lights with a chamfered mullion. To the right is a narrow lancet, followed by a larger three-light Perpendicular window with a four-centred arched head and deep hoodmould. Further east at eaves level is a two-light window serving the former roodloft. An unusually sited tall round chimney stack with ring mouldings, broached to a hexagonal base, rises above this area.

The chancel, of equal width to the nave, contains a south window of paired cusped lights in a rectangular surround. Adjacent to it is a low pointed-arched chamfered priests' door, now blocked. A three-light 19th-century east window with reticulated tracery and narrow hood lights the chancel. The north chancel wall has a single lancet with an ogee-arched head.

The north nave wall has a shallow projection for the rood stair at its east end, a large three-light Perpendicular window with a four-centred arched head and deep hoodmould matching that to the south, and a smaller lancet to the west.

The interior is rendered. A flight of five steps rises from the west nave to the tower, incorporating a stone bench, with a separate steep flight of three steps leading to a shouldered tower doorway at the north west. The nave has a seven-bay boarded waggon roof.

The chancel arch is plain and wide with a pointed profile. The chancel is lit by a three-bay arch-braced boarded roof with heavy dentilled wallplate, both the chancel and nave roofs dating to the 19th century.

A small octagonal chalice-shaped font sits on a square stone base, with a niche in the splay of a nearby south west window. Small Norman windows are present in the north and south walls. A narrow pointed-arched entrance to stone stairs providing access to the former rood loft is located at the north east; at its foot are two small memorials: one from the late 18th century to members of the Robotham family of Cross Tregarreg, and one from 1840 to Cecilia Waters of Duck Pool Farm. A rectangular rood access opening is visible above. Another wall monument on the north west nave wall commemorates Reverend William Edwards, rector of Michaelstone, who died in 1788.

The sanctuary contains a late medieval niche with a crocketed canopy. An aumbry recess is located in the north wall. The east window contains stained glass dating to 1892 by Powell's. Seventeenth-century ledger slabs are set into the chancel floor, and an early 19th-century memorial tablet to William Thomas of Coed y Gores is also present.

The tower houses five bells cast in 1766, hung with an additional bell in a new frame of 1994. The earlier frame is retained adjacent to the new one.