Church of St Teilo

Church of St Teilo

This is a Grade I listed church built of red sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings, featuring a battered stone plinth and slate roofs, except for the spire which is covered with wooden shingles. The church is arranged in cruciform plan with an aisled nave incorporating a clerestory, transepts, a crossing-tower, chancel, north chapel (Cillwch Chapel), and west porch.

The west front features a single-storey gabled stone porch with a pointed arched entrance doorway having a double chamfered head and 20th-century glazed double doors. Above this is a small single light window with a flat head set in the gable. The porch side walls are blind. On each side of the porch, the aisle walls have small single lancet windows. The west gable of the clerestory displays a tall 15th-century two-light cinquefoil window with a flat head, ribbed panels to the tracery, and rectangular leaded panes.

The nave's north and south aisles are enclosed by lean-to roofs. The nave's south clerestory contains two two-light cinquefoil windows as described above. The nave's south aisle has three 19th-century pointed arched windows, each with two-light trefoils and traceried quatrefoils. The south transept gable displays a 19th-century restored two-light window with a Tudor-arched dripmould bearing stops that carry the Chi Rho sacred monogram on the left, and a pointed arched chamfered doorway on the right fitted with a 19th-century boarded door with ornamental strap hinges. Above the doorway is a small rectangular window with lattice glazing.

The chancel's south wall contains three windows: on the left, a small two-light with a flat head; in the centre, a flat-headed window with three ogee lights and traceried quatrefoils; and on the right, a three-light pointed arched window with intersecting tracery and a 19th-century dripmould. The east gable features a 14th-century three-light trefoil-headed window with dagger tracery. The chancel's north wall is blind.

To the right stands Cillwch Chapel, which has a lean-to roof with a square end-stack and a 19th-century octagonal chimney pot with a moulded circular base. On the chapel's north wall are a pointed arched window with two trefoil-headed lights, an ogee-headed window, and a pointed arched doorway fitted with a 19th-century boarded door and ornamental strap hinges. The chapel's west wall contains a 14th-century pointed arched window with three ogee-headed lights and traceried trefoils, and an oval wall monument to Frances Evans (died 1832).

The nave's north clerestory has two two-light windows of the type described above. The nave's north aisle contains two 19th-century three-light cinquefoil windows with flat heads and a 15th-century two-light window with a flat head and tracery of ribbed panels. The crossing tower has two trefoil-headed louvred bell openings on each face, which are partly obscured by the ridge of the nave roof to the west, and features a fine splay-foot spire with a ball finial.

The interior is remarkable for its austere simplicity. The chancel is out of line with the nave, being deflected to the south. From the nave, the chancel is barely visible through the low crossing arch. Entry is through a stone-flagged porch with a collar-rafter roof and a stone bench on the left. The porch's 19th-century inner doorway has a pointed arch with a dripmould and foliated stops.

The majestic nave has high and narrow whitewashed walls and features a fine arch-braced collar-rafter roof. The nave comprises five bays. The octagonal piers have moulded capitals and sit on octagonal moulded bases, with double-chamfered pointed arches. Above the depressed chamfered arch of the crossing, the upper wall to the right has a pointed arched doorway to a former gallery. From the angles of the tower crossing, four massive oak posts rise approximately 20 metres to support the bell chamber. The original five bells, inscribed with prayers for the church and for Queen Anne, and a sixth dated 1821, were recast in 1978–9.

The chancel walls are stripped. The chancel has a fine arch-braced collar-rafter roof with a battlemented wall-plate and cambered tie beams with painted decoration to the soffits. A 14th-century piscina features a chamfered pointed arch, cinquefoil head, and foliated finial. Set into the tower buttress of the southwest wall at ground level is a blocked ogee-arched doorway. On the adjoining south wall, a blocked upper doorway with a flat head has a chamfered surround with pyramid stops. At ground level are two further blocked openings: on the left, a segmental arched doorway with stone voussoirs and keystone, and on the right, a chamfered pointed-arched doorway with pyramid stops.

Cillwch Chapel is separated from the chancel by an arcade of three depressed pointed arches. The arches nearest the tower have piers with attached shafts, one bearing a mask at impost level known as the 'green man', and feature complex ovolo and cavetto moulded arches. The arcade contains two squints aligned towards the chancel altar. Cillwch Chapel is furnished with a moulded late 17th-century altar rail featuring turned bulbous balusters. Either side of the chapel's east window are stone corbels with a king's head, said to represent King Edward II and possibly dating to the early 14th century.

The porch contains a massive medieval parish chest, over three metres long, made from oak planks with a lid in two halves fitted with strap hinges. The nave has 19th-century benches with shaped ends and close-boarded backs. The east window contains stained glass by Howard Martin of Celtic Studios. In the north aisle are two 18th-century windows removed from Llantilio Court, displaying the arms of Sir David Gam and Sir William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Cillwch Chapel's east window is by C.E. Kempe.

The chancel contains several good wall monuments and floor slabs. On the west wall is an oval slate tablet to Jane Hughes of Treadam (died 1815), featuring a closed alabaster urn garlanded with foliage, carved by Reeves of Bath. On the north wall is a rectangular alabaster tablet to John Morris (died 1753), framed by fluted Corinthian pilasters and flanked by acanthus-scrolled tapering wing brackets with a broken pediment bearing an inset painted achievement. Also on the north wall is an oval tablet to Mary Lewis (died 1760), surmounted by an obelisk against which is a carved achievement, and a fine monument to Mrs Mary Ann Bosanquet (died 1820) by John Flaxman, comprising a square alabaster tablet depicting a dying figure surrounded by relatives or friends, with a reeded architrave with paterae at the angles and an inscribed tablet below. Between the choir stalls are two fine floor slabs: the first depicts a man with his wife, probably Jane and John Walderne (died 1620), with three sons in contemporary costume; the second commemorates Vicar Owen Rodger (died 1660) and bears three candles and ten angel's faces.

In Cillwch Chapel's north wall is a classical-style wall monument to Thomas Medlycott (died 1738), featuring a rectangular marble tablet flanked by fluted Corinthian columns and, above a cornice, a painted achievement flanked by shells. On the south wall is a small tablet to James Watkins (died 1721) in the style of the Brute brothers, with a sacred monogram inscribed in the pediment, a ball finial, and a winged angel in the apron. In the south transept, the tower's upper wall displays a rectangular tablet to Matthew Morgan (died 1761) with a winged angel at the head, by P & T Brute.