Church of St Cadoc

Church of St Cadoc

This parish church is built of rubble stone with stone tiled roofs and coped gables. It comprises a west tower, nave, chancel with a 19th-century south vestry, south porch, and a northeast Beaufort Chapel attached to a 19th-century north aisle.

The three-stage crenellated west tower dates to the 15th century and is constructed of squared sandstone with diagonal stepped buttresses. It is ornamented with blind tracery to the second and third stages. The tower has a deep moulded plinth and a moulded pointed west door that was renewed in the 19th century, with a plaque above recording the gift of a clock in the second stage in 1863. A three-light 15th-century pointed traceried window stands above the door. Single-light ogee windows face east and north. The third stage has louvred two-light bell-openings with quatrefoil and crocketed finials and gargoyles. Small glazed loops up the right side of the south face mark the stair.

The 15th-century porch has a pointed arched moulded doorway with rounded shafts and wave-and-hollow mouldings. Each side has a 15th-century flat-headed window with ogee tracery. Within are a four-centred inner doorway and a stoup. The two-bay roof has three tie-beam, collar, and angle strut trusses, possibly dating to the 14th century.

The nave south side, to the right of the porch, has two 15th-century three-light pointed traceried windows and a rood-stair projection with a 15th-century flat-headed two-light traceried window. To the north is a single flat-headed three-light traceried window. The chancel south side has an 1868 lean-to vestry with a basement door and two cusped lights to the south window. A large stone chimney rises on the chancel wall face. Each side has a 14th-century two-light pointed window with quatrefoil head.

The east end features a large 19th-century pointed three-light traceried window with hoodmould. The Beaufort Chapel to the right has a slightly lower gable separated by a buttress and a smaller but similar 19th-century three-light east window. The Beaufort Chapel's north side has a 15th-century four-light flat-headed window with hoodmould. The north aisle or Lady Chapel of 1868 has two 19th-century pointed two-light windows with ogee and quatrefoil tracery and hoodmoulds. The west end has a 19th-century three-light pointed window with hoodmould, a basement door to the right, and a single light to the basement left.

Internally, the nave has a 19th-century barrel roof of twelve by eight panels and a two-bay 19th-century north arcade of moulded four-centred arches on moulded shafts. The segmental-pointed west tower arch dies into the jambs with wave moulding, and a triangular-headed tower stair door is to the left. The west door has a four-centred rear arch. The two nave south windows have moulded rear arches. The rood stair door is moulded four-centred with stone steps within, though 19th-century alterations cut away walling to allow the stairs to be used as access to the pulpit. The chancel arch is chamfered, dying into the sides, with a 19th-century hoodmould. The chancel has a 19th-century boarded panel roof of eleven by ten panels with brattished wall-plate and a chamfered pointed south door to the 19th-century vestry.

The north side features a fine 15th-century two-bay arcade to the northeast Beaufort Chapel. The piers have shafts and hollows similar to the porch south door, with four-centred arches and wave-and-hollow mouldings. A 19th-century blind two-light pointed window to the right may be a restoration of an original window blocked when the Beaufort Chapel was added. The north aisle has a 19th-century scissor-rafter roof and a 19th-century arch to the Beaufort Chapel, imitating the chancel arch. The Beaufort Chapel itself has a 19th-century eleven by eight panel roof.

The church contains three much-mutilated fragments of recumbent effigies, two of which are said to be the fourth Earl of Worcester and his countess. Fragments of a destroyed alabaster canopy formerly of the tomb of William, third Earl of Worcester, as set out in his will of 1588, remain in the north wall above the effigies. A family vault beneath contains many of the family from this date until 1704. On the chancel south wall is an attractive later 18th-century plaque with fluted border inscribed with just "Margret Pytt" and an adjoining oval memorial with urn and cherubs to William Pitt, died 1779.

A 19th-century font has a bowl with eight angle shafts on a non-matching round base said to be original, though if so, heavily retooled. A curious late medieval three-sided carved stone fragment on the floor adjoining is cylindrical within. A 19th-century timber pulpit has five blind tracery timber panels, apparently 15th-century, and is said to come from a lost rood screen. Early to mid 20th-century chancel fittings are present. An organ of 1909 by Sweetland of Bristol stands at the east end of the Beaufort Chapel.

The stained glass includes a fine east window of 1868 by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake of London, in memory of Philip Morgan of The Broom, depicting the Nativity, Crucifixion and Resurrection with finely drawn figures and Pre-Raphaelite colours. The west tower window, showing Saints Peter, John the Baptist, and Paul, dates to 1875 and is said to be by Lavers & Barraud, though of much more conventional design. Most of the other windows have patterned glass of 1868 with clear and red panes bearing faded pale yellow Alpha and Omega and IHS quatrefoils. In the Beaufort Chapel is fine armorial glass in the east window of 1872, commemorating the marriage of Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Isabel Somers Cocks. A historically significant north window commemorates Field Marshal Lord Raglan (1788-1855), with twelve plaques listing his campaigns from Denmark in 1807 to the Crimea, erected by subscription of over 600 non-commissioned officers.