Church of St Cadoc

Church of St Cadoc

This is a Grade II* listed church built primarily of rubble stone with ashlar dressings and stone tiles laid in diminishing courses. It comprises a nave, north aisle, chancel, west tower, and south porch, and represents a significant example of late medieval ecclesiastical architecture with 19th-century additions and alterations.

The south porch has stone side walls rising to a height of 2 metres, with upper walls of timber frame construction featuring arch braces rising from short wall posts to the wall plate. The porch gable displays scalloped bargeboards with an ornamental finial, and the roof truss over the entry is arch-braced with a cambered tie-beam. The inner pointed arched entrance doorway is chamfered and fitted with a 19th-century door adorned with applied fillets and ornate strap hinges.

The south wall of the nave contains three 15th-century windows of particular note: a late 15th-century 2-light cinquefoil window with flat head; a 15th-century 3-light cinquefoil window with ribbed panel tracery under a flat head; and a 15th-century window with three ogee-headed lights, each containing cinquefoils and traceried lights beneath a flat head.

The chancel has a south wall featuring a similar but smaller 3-light window with ogee-headed lights, a pointed-arched chamfered doorway with a 19th-century boarded door, a trefoil-headed lancet, and a broad squat buttress at its junction with the nave. A 15th-century east window displays 3-light trefoil design with Perpendicular tracery. The north wall of the chancel contains a trefoil-headed lancet.

The north aisle, added in the 19th century as a lean-to structure, has side walls containing 15th-century 2-light and 3-light ogee-headed windows with cinquefoils, apparently salvaged from the nave's north wall and relocated during repairs by Prichard in 1878. The aisle's outer wall features, from left to right: a pointed arched doorway, a buttress with offsets, a lancet pair with trefoils, a second buttress, and another lancet pair.

The west tower rises in three stages. Each face is topped by a battlemented parapet with three merlons projecting on corbels. The bell chamber on each face has louvred 2-light openings with flat heads. A string course runs across the middle of the tower. On the west face, a small single-light window rises above the string course, with a large pointed arched doorway at ground level featuring a chamfered stone surround and a 20th-century oak door decorated with blind Perpendicular panels. The south face of the tower has a single trefoil-headed light at ground level.

The interior walls are plastered with an encaustic tile floor. Both nave and chancel feature 15th-century wagon roofs with moulded ribs and elaborately moulded wall plates; the chancel roof is further decorated with square bosses adorned with floral paterae. The pointed tower arch has a double chamfer that dies into the walls on each side, while the chancel arch is similar but broader. A chamfered Tudor-arched doorway on the left gives access to steps leading to the former rood loft.

The nave's north wall contains a 19th-century arcade of two double-chamfered pointed arches springing from ribbed corbels on each side, supported at the centre by a circular column with a moulded octagonal capital. The chancel piscina is chamfered with a pointed arch and pyramid stops. At the east end of the north aisle stands a 19th-century wooden screen; its lower section is boarded, while the upper portion comprises tall open trefoil-headed panels supported on slender columns with shaft rings, surmounted by an embattled cornice. Early 20th-century pews feature rectangular ends with blind Perpendicular traceried panels. A choir stall with carved fish at each end of the sloping desk is also probably early 20th-century in date. A 19th-century communion rail has wrought iron supports with scrolled brackets.

The 19th-century font has a deep octagonal bowl supported by a short compound pier of four shafts springing from a chamfered octagonal plinth.

The stained glass includes a west window probably from 1848 containing a small crucifixion scene in the centre light in the style of Wailes; a north chancel window depicting an angel and child in memory of E J M Feetham; and a south chancel window of 1848 displaying the arms of the Archbishop of Llandaff.

Few wall monuments survived the 19th-century restoration. Those that remain are located in the lower walls of the west tower and include memorials to James Davies (died 1788) and William Williams (died 1782).