Church of St Andrew and Teilo

Church of St Andrew and Teilo

This is a Perpendicular style church built of snecked rock-faced sandstone with freestone dressings and a slate roof behind coped gables on moulded kneelers. The building comprises an aisled nave with a south-west porch and an unfinished south transept tower, together with a lower and narrower chancel.

The five-bay nave has buttressed aisles with an ashlar parapet on a corbel table. The aisle windows are two-light openings under hood moulds, except on the south side where the easternmost bay has a single light and the west bay contains the porch. The gabled porch features angle buttresses, an ashlar parapet and gable. The gable contains a canopied statue niche with a figure of a bishop holding a church. The doorway is a Tudor arch with two orders of thin shafts. Inside the porch, a stone bench sits on the left, a two-centred doorway with continuous moulding has a door with vertical ribs, and the left wall has two open cusped lights.

The clerestorey has a corbel table beneath a freestone cornice with shallow pilasters between bays. Its windows are square-headed three-light openings with hood moulds and diamond stops.

The two-stage south transept tower incorporates a chapel in its lower stage, with angle buttresses projecting in front of the south aisle. On its west side is a porch beneath a hipped stone slab roof, with a south doorway in a Tudor arch with hood and diamond stops. The left wall of this porch has an open cusped light. Inside are doorways under pointed arches to the south aisle and a stair turret. The stair turret in the south-west angle has narrow stair lights in a splayed angle. The lower stage contains two cusped south windows and a blind arch in the east wall, while the second stage has a pair of smaller cusped lights in each face.

The chancel has set-back gabled buttresses, two two-light south windows, and a five-light east window. The north side has three cusped lights, a lean-to vestry and organ loft. The north aisle and clerestorey are similar to the south side.

The west front has angle buttresses with the bases of attached pinnacles on the offsets. A seven-light window with cusped transom, hood mould and diamond stops is set above a broad moulded sill band. Below this window are two pointed doorways with shafts to the central jamb and blind arcading in the spandrels, set within a single segmental arch with outer polygonal shafts continued as a hood mould. The doors have vertical ribs with iron studs. To the right is a stone tablet dated 1895 with a consecration cross. The aisles have three-light west windows.

The nave has five-bay Perpendicular style arcades with piers set diagonally and featuring attached shafts. Thin wall shafts rise from the spandrels to roof corbels. The tie-beam roof has castellated beams and intermediate arched braces on corbelled shields above the clerestorey windows. The west window has thin shafts to the rere arch.

The chancel arch is in similar style to the arcades with foliage capitals and a hood mould with head stops. The chancel has a boarded wagon roof with painted thin ribs and bosses on a moulded cornice. The east window has a shafted rere arch. On the south side is a two-centred arch dying into the imposts leading to the south chapel. On the north side is a two-centred arch with shafts and capitals to the imposts, opening to the vestry and organ loft. The chancel also contains double sedilia under cusped arches with an octagonal central colonnette. The piscina to their left has a cusped arch, credence shelf, and a bowl projecting slightly from the wall.

Against the east wall stands an elaborate wooden reredos with painted and gilded relief panels by J. Coates Carter, installed in 1924. A triptych has a carved figure of Christ as the Good Shepherd on a pedestal beneath a canopy, flanked by figures of Andrew and Teilo and angels, with further angels in the hinged outer panels. The background depicts a pastoral scene with depictions of Cardiff churches, including Llandaff Cathedral, on the horizon. Above the central panel is a panelled tester with brattishing. Below the central panel is an arcade of blind cusped arches with painted shields and Passion symbols. Beneath this, concealed by the altar, is a five-bay panel with cusped ogee arches, relief foliage, and an Agnus Dei to the wider central panel. The reredos is flanked by plainer wooden panelling against the east wall.

In the south aisle is a Perpendicular style font with an octagonal bowl decorated with quatrefoils to each face, on a thin octagonal stem and detached marble shafts with crocket capitals on the underside of the bowl. The high wooden pulpit stands on a square stone plinth composed of four squat moulded square shafts. The pulpit has a corbelled stone base to a polygonal upper section decorated with arcades of blind arches. The pews are plain, and the choir stalls have ends with poppy heads.

The east window contains stained glass commemorating the 1914-18 war and depicting the Crucifixion, by Kempe & Tower of 1919. In the south aisle are stained glass windows depicting St Teilo (of circa 1919) and the Annunciation (of circa 1926). The west window has stained glass in its tracery lights.