Church of St Tewdric

Church of St Tewdric

This Grade I listed church is built mainly of local hard fine-grained limestone and coarse sandstone of the Tintern group, with coarse sandy limestones used for the architectural details. The church consists of a nave without clerestory, an offset chancel, north and south aisles, a west tower, a south porch, and an organ chamber added to the south side of the chancel.

The nave has coped gables, plain where it butts against the tower and with an apex cross at the east end. The south aisle and porch were built together, as the base plinth and wave mould running round both show. The upper part of the aisle wall was rebuilt in 1882, as the different character of the stonework indicates, with sympathetically designed windows that appear to reproduce the existing ones. The aisle has four bays with diagonal corner buttresses. There is a tall three-light Perpendicular window in the west gable and another in the east gable. The south wall has three lower three-light windows with the same tracery. The porch is in the second bay from the left, with diagonal corner buttresses and a pointed archway whose mouldings are reproduced on the inner doorway. The door is a Victorian double plank one with good ironwork. The porch has a coped gable with apex cross.

The chancel is medieval but has had extensive Victorian refacing done sympathetically. The organ chamber is wholly of 1882 and projects in front of the east gable window of the south aisle. It has a coped gable and a lancet window with dripmould. The chancel has a plinth and stringcourse, but the organ chamber does not. The south wall has another three-light Perpendicular window and an Early English lancet which was reopened in 1882, and a two-light Perpendicular one.

The north aisle is wholly Perpendicular in character, although the windows were clearly inserted into existing walling. It has a plinth with wave-moulded string, stepped buttresses paired between the bays and diagonal at the corners, with continuous dripmould covered by the buttresses. Three bays contain five windows (one, three, one) all three-light Perpendicular ones like those on the south aisle. Coped gables with apex crosses complete the design.

The tall west tower is in ashlar with three stages and an octagonal stair turret on the north-east corner. The moulded plinth is continuous from both aisles and round the tower. Diagonal corner buttresses stepped all the way up cover the first string course but go under the other two. A pointed arch west door similar to the south porch is flanked by a three-light Perpendicular window above it, inserted in an enlarged opening before 1909. The second stage has a single light opening to the ringing chamber on three sides with moulded architraves and pierced stone windows. The bell stage has a two-light recessed opening on each face, also with pierced stone windows. The parapet is battlemented with buttresses carried up into small finials.

The church interior is plastered and painted. The nave arcades are Early English with four colonnettes about a central shaft carrying pointed chamfered arches. Each arcade is four bays, but the western bay of the north arcade has a different form with a plain square pier, possibly indicating rebuilding after the previous tower was removed in 1483. The chancel arch is Early English with the same profile as the nave arcades; the tower arch dates from 1483. The rere-arches of all windows are medieval except for the three eastern ones of the south aisle, which show the Victorian rebuilding noticed outside, though they appear to re-use some of the original stonework. There is a squint and a door to the rood stair at the east end of the south aisle.

The nave roof has close-set arch-braced collar beam trusses appearing to be 15th century. The ceiling was removed in 1882 and replaced with Victorian boarding. The aisle roofs are Victorian ribbed waggon vaults in the Perpendicular manner. The chancel roof is Victorian with close-coupled rafters.

The pulpit and most furnishings are Victorian. The organ is of 1883. The medieval font was found under the porch floor in 1943 and reinstated after being buried in 1882. It has an octagonal bowl, as does the larger and more elaborately Perpendicular Victorian one. The west window of the south aisle contains fragments of medieval glass. There are six bells, all dated 1765, restored in 1970. The elaborate towered reredos, the east window glass, and probably the choir stalls date from 1914 and were the gift of the Reverend Watkin Davies, Vicar from 1879 to 1923, who appears as donor in the east window. The south aisle reredos is a World War I memorial of 1921 designed by W D Caroe.

The churchyard contains a number of 18th and 19th century memorials. The most notable is the railed enclosure on the north side of the chancel. There is also a fragment of what may have been the medieval priest's house about 50 metres north of the chancel.