Church of St Catwg

The Church of St Catwg is a medieval nave-and-chancel church, distinguished by a substantial early Tudor tower. The nave, porches, and chancel are constructed from warm-hued Old Red Sandstone with roofs of small grey slates, while the tower is built of greyer ashlar.

The tower is a prominent feature, with three distinct stages marked by weathered string courses and topped with an emphatic embattled parapet. A four-stage stair turret rises above the parapet at the northeast corner, also embattled and crowned with a weathercock. The west face of the tower features a Tudor-arched doorway with a hoodmould, a small square window above, a two-centred arched belfry window with two cusped depressed-arched lights, stone louvres, and Perpendicular blank tracery above. Gargoyles in the form of pipe-shaped projections are situated at each end of the string course above the doorway. The south side of the second stage has two vertically-aligned small square windows; the north side has only one. Each side of the belfry stage has a window mirroring the west face.

The north side of the nave has a substantial buttress near the east end, a medieval cusped lancet window with a hoodmould, a large Victorian three-light traceried window, and a prominent gabled porch towards the west end, featuring a moulded two-centred doorway and an apex finial. The south side has a small gabled porch close to the west end, with shafted imposts and hollow moulding, two widely-spaced square-headed three-light windows with cinquefoiled lights, and a low, blocked square-headed doorway with a humped monolithic lintel in the centre. The chancel, rebuilt by Prichard, has a priest doorway flanked by two-light mullioned windows with depressed-arched lights, a matching east window, and a similarly-arched one-light window on the north side. Both east gables, those of the nave and chancel, have raised coping, the chancel’s being particularly wide.

Inside, the nave walls have a pronounced internal batter and carry deep moulded wallplates with brattished cornices, supporting a late medieval ribbed barrel-vaulted roof. A blocked round-headed doorway is situated in the centre of the south wall. A relatively narrow tower arch, likely late 13th or early 14th century, features a Tudor-arched extrados and a set-in two-centred arch dying into the sides, both with sunk-wave moulding. The arch contains a wooden screen composed of Jacobean carved arched panels. The east end is characterized by a low two-centred and double-chamfered chancel arch, and evidence of a formerly lower chancel gable on the east side of the chancel wall. A blocked two-centred arch is found central on the south chancel wall, and a medieval stone coffin lid carved with a cross within a foliated roundel lies on the floor of the northeast corner.