Church of St Gwynno

Church of St Gwynno

This is a medieval church that was restored in the Gothic Revival style. The building is constructed of rubble with rock-faced stone from the restoration period, ashlar dressings, and a slate roof with cruciform finials that steps down the hillside. The plan comprises a nave with a western bellcote and southern porch, and a chancel with a northern vestry. Almost all openings except the inner southern door, priests' door, and western front date to the 19th century.

The western bellcote features a saddle-back stepped ashlar roof with paired louvred lights to the belfry (tiered lancets to the narrower sides) and a quatrefoil in the apex. It projects from the western wall, supported by stepped clasping buttresses with offsets that create an open western porch beneath a segmental-pointed arch. Set back within this is the moulded pointed-arched main western doorway. This arrangement also creates an arched recess topped by a band of trefoil moulding incorporating gargoyle-type head carvings, above a single-light trefoil-headed western window. Below this, the deep stepped sill terminates in a band of foliage carving above the outer western arch.

The deep southern porch has a heavily moulded pointed-arched outer doorway with a very decorative niche and figure above. Inside are stone seats on either side, a flag floor, and a two-bay boarded roof with low ridge beam. The main southern doorway is a single-chamfered and stopped pointed arch. Southern windows all have curvilinear tracery with mouchettes: three two-light windows to the nave and one single-light window to the chancel, all with hoodmoulds and head stops. A similar three-light eastern window is also present. A chamfered southern priests' door leads to the chancel.

The northern nave windows are quite different and later in date: they are large and square-headed with hoodmoulds and Perpendicular-style tracery, comprising four windows of alternately three and two lights. A chimney serves the northeastern vestry.

The church stands in a large churchyard containing numerous early and mid-19th century tombs and headstones in the upper part, many with inscriptions in English and Welsh. The churchyard is bounded by a dry-stone wall of fine craftsmanship.

Interior

The interior features bare unrendered rubble with boarded ceilings and embattled wallplates. The nave contains four bays of arch-braced trusses with moulded purlins and an arched ridge beam, rising from plain corbels and ornamented with gilded shields and bosses. The chancel has three bays with a barrel ceiling that is ribbed and enriched with gilded bosses at the intersections. A stone flag floor to the nave incorporates a number of ledger slabs, while the sanctuary is paved with encaustic tiles. One shallow step rises from the nave to the chancel and another from the chancel to the sanctuary.

The chancel arch is plain and pointed, constructed of undressed stone. Adjacent to the north is the former rood-loft opening. The windows and western door have ashlar surrounds with varied mouldings to the window heads. The chancel window surround is finely moulded with clustered colonettes, ball-flower moulding to the arch, stiff-leaf capitals, and head stops. A pointed-arched doorway leads to the northeastern vestry, while a segmental-pointed inner arch of undressed stone frames the southeastern priests' door.

The church contains a good collection of 18th and 19th-century monuments, some signed by monumental masons from Cardiff and Bristol, many commemorating families from local farms. Particularly noteworthy are 18th-century slabs set against the walls (probably originally laid flat): eight in the nave and three in the chancel, bearing long inscriptions with fine lettering.

The font, located near the western doorway, is an unusual ring-moulded tub with lead lining on a later stem. By the southern door and a small rectangular recess is a fragment of early Christian sculpture: a relief cross set within a circle with infill dots. The ceiling is hung with a good set of converted oil-lamps. The vestry contains a Benefaction Board recording a gift from Edward Thomas of Llantarnam in 1675, though the board itself is of later date.

All windows contain stained glass: the eastern window commemorates Morgan family members who died in the 1870s, made by A Savell and Co; the northern windows are by RJ Newbery, dated 1913–16.