Church of St Illtyd

Cadw's description

Location

To S of the castle, high above the town.

History

Victorian Decorated Gothic rebuilding of early C14 church with C16 3-stage W tower, 4-bay nave with SW porch, N aisle added in 1849/50, slightly lower chancel with N vestry built in 1893/4.

Exterior

Coursed and bull-nosed rubble masonry, freestone dressings, gable parapets crucifix finials and eaves courses; slate roofs, cylindrical chimney to vestry. Corbelled and crenellated tower parapet with crocketed finials, grotesques and SE angle stair turret. Paired bell stage openings with Tudor hood moulds; similar window over W entrance. Curved sided triangle window beside nook shafted SW porch. 2-light Y-tracery and impaled trefoil windows to N and S, except to N nave aisle which has similar single light windows. 3-light E windows with intersecting and impaled trefoil tracery.

Churchyard which retains 1st World War Memorial with the crucifixion is entered through lychgate donated in 1910 by Samuel Llewellyn of Coed Parc.

Interior

Rendered interior with freestone dressings; open timber roofs, boarded and with ornate wall plate to chancel. Chamfered nave arcade with head stops, carried on octagonal piers with moulded capitals. Stopped base to tower arch with Gothic screen and plaster ceiled tower chamber. Heavily foliated capitals and corbel shafts to inner order of chancel arch; similar arches to vestry, W and S sides. Chancel retains C14 piscina and sedilia with crocketed gable canopies. 1894 Gothic reredos and choir stalls with carved fish by Clarke of Llandaff. Window surrounds and monuments fron original chancel are retained in Victorian vestry; double cusped and crocketed ogee rere arches to N side; many C17/C18 and C19 wall monuments, two with semicircular hoods and flanked by free standing columns, one of which is to Philip Gamage, died 1675.

Tower chamber retains 3 important medieval C11/C12 tombstones, heavily worn.