Church of St Michael

The Church of St Michael is a building of local red sandstone and lias with cut stone dressings and Welsh slate roofs. It dates to the medieval period, with significant Victorian alterations and rebuilding.

The church consists of a nave, chancel, west tower with a saddleback roof, a vestry, and a south porch. The stonework is largely roughly squared to random rubble, with some early herringbone at the base of the north nave wall. Victorian stonework is more carefully squared and rock-faced, particularly noticeable in the entrance face of the south porch and at the top of the tower, though there is also substantial refacing elsewhere. The south wall of the nave features a trefoil-headed light to the west of the porch. The steeply gabled porch was rebuilt in the mid-19th century and has a buttress, coped gable, and cross finial. It retains stone seats and an inner doorway with a segmental pointed arch and chamfered mouldings. Adjoining the porch is a small gabled south transept with a window featuring two trefoil-headed lights and a quatrefoil above. Both the nave and chancel gables are coped and have cross finials. The south wall of the chancel has two trefoil-headed lights, with an oval memorial between them. The east window is of three lights with a sexfoil above. A trefoil-headed light and a large Tudor-style arch, infilled with brick, are found on the north wall of the chancel; this arch was inserted by F R Kempson in 1908 as an intended entry to a vestry, which was never built. The nave has a trefoil-headed window and a two-light Perpendicular window with a dripmould. The tower is roughly square, with sandstone quoins extending to the top. The upper stage of the Victorian stonework is matched to the lower section. The three-stage tower has a saddleback roof, reminiscent of a previous lower tower design. The ground stage has a Victorian doorway and door. The intermediate stage includes a slit window on the west wall. The bell stage (19th century) has a louvred trefoil-headed opening on the north and south faces, and slit windows in the east and west gables. The gables are coped with kneelers. A ledger-stone commemorating the diarist William Thomas (died 1795) is set into the exterior wall near the south of the chancel.

The interior floor level rises in stages up to six steps from the west door of the tower to the altar steps. A medieval doorway is located in the east wall of the tower, approximately twelve feet above the nave floor, suggesting it was originally the sole access to the upper floors of the tower, possibly indicating a semi-defensible purpose in the Middle Ages. The west end of the nave retains stone wall seating, a rare survival of pre-bench seating in a church. The roof is an old timber-framed structure of five bays. All furnishings and the tiled floor are Victorian or later. A medieval font stands on a modern base, and a medieval stoup is located inside the entrance from the south porch. A memorial of 1546 refers to ‘Pentre paen.’ Within the vestry are four 18th-century gravestones belonging to the Lewis family, associated with Rhydlaver or Rhydlafr, and an alabaster tablet inscribed in Welsh. The east window is dated 1856.