History
The church of St. John in Llanblethian, originally dedicated to St. Bleddian, was built in the 12th century, when the nave and chancel were erected. It was first recorded in a charter issued by Nicholas ap Gwrgant, Bishop of Llandaff, according to which Llanblethian became the property of the Benedictine Tewkesbury Abbey. This document was undated but must have been issued during Nicholas’s term of office, between 1148 and 1183. Church was recorded again in the tax register of 1254, in which the parish of Llanblethian and its chapels were valued at 18 marks.
In the 14th century, the church was enlarged with the addition of a south transept or chapel. The culmination of the medieval building process was the erection of the tower in 1477, founded by Lady Anne Neville, wife of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later King Richard III of England. Construction activity ceased in the 16th century, although furnishings and minor alterations may have been made. In 1535, tithes from Llanblethian were still paid to Tewkesbury, but after the dissolution of the abbey as a result of the Reformation activities of Henry VIII, patronage of Llanblethian Church passed to the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester, who appointed vicars from then on. In 1603, Llanblethian was listed as a vicarage, valued at just over £43. This sum had risen to £90 by 1771.
In the 1890s, the church underwent renovation, during which the interior was renewed and the original plasterwork was removed, leaving the walls stone bare. A positive aspect of this work was the exposure of the oak roof trusses, although some of the medieval beams had to be replaced. During the restoration work, the crypt beneath the chapel was also opened, revealing the remains of approximately two hundred skeletons. These may have been transferred to the ossuary from the cemetery, or they may have been the site of a mass burial following some tragic historical event (in 1405, a battle with Welsh rebels was fought near Llanblethian, at Stalling Down). In 1907, the tower underwent a thorough renovation.
Architecture
The church was built on the slope of a hill, gently descending towards a small river to the south. Originally, it consisted of a rectangular, elongated nave, and a narrower, almost square chancel on the eastern side. In the 14th century, the building was enlarged of a spacious chapel on the southern side of the nave. In the second half of the 15th century, the Romanesque western wall of the nave was removed, and a lofty tower with a quadrangular base and a height of approximately 24 meters was built in its place. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the church was also enlarged of a porch on the southern side, adjoining the western wall of the chapel.
Initially, the church was lit by small, deeply splayed windows with semicircular heads. In the 13th or 14th century, tall but rather narrow windows with trefoils were introduced. During the late Middle Ages, a large window in the English Perpendicular Gothic style was inserted into the eastern wall of the chancel, topped with a pointed arch, filled with three-light tracery featuring cinquefoil motifs, and framed by a curved drip hood supported by corbels in the form of carved heads. A large three-light window was also inserted into the south wall of the chapel, but there the tracery featured motifs of trefoils and hexafoliate rosettes inscribed within spherical figures. From the east, the chapel was lit by a smaller two-light window with ogee arches, set into the quadrilateral jambs.
The tower acquired a design rather unusual for the Glamorgan region, more characteristic of the English counties of Devon or Somerset. It was reinforced at the corners with multi-stepped buttresses, the staircase was placed in the northeastern octagonal turret, and the walls were topped with decorative battlement and four pinnacles with crockets. The parapet was set on a cornice, with gargoyles of mascaron-like shapes at its corners. A similar cornice also divided the tower’s facades into two roughly equal halves. A third cornice ran halfway up the moulded, pointed entrance portal, set in the ground floor of the western wall. The bell storey was lit on each side by a three-light window with intersecting tracery, between which openwork stone partitions with quatrefoil motifs were set. An additional small pointed-arch window and another quadrangular window were placed on the south. On the west, a three-light window with tracery typical of Perpendicular Gothic was created above the portal.
The main entrance to the church was located in the southern wall of the nave, somewhat unusually, in the middle of its length, rather than closer to the western wall, as was more common practice. It led through a semicircular portal with a stepped jamb and no tympanum. A second portal on the axis of the west wall of the nave may have existed as early as the Romanesque period, replaced in the 15th century by an arcade opening onto a subtower porch, accessible through a portal in the ground floor of the west wall of the tower. This late Gothic opening was decorated with uninterrupted mouldin extending from the entire height to the plinth. The late Gothic porch in front of the southern entrance was adorned with a corner pinnacle and a pointed drip hoood above the entrance, set on bas-relief consoles depicting animals or beasts. A stone bench was located inside, near the east wall, set in a recess covered by two segmental arches rising from three chamfered stone corbels.
Inside the church, a Romanesque chancel arcade, presumably with a semicircular arch, must have initially separated the nave from the chancel. In the later Middle Ages, a rood screen was placed in front of the arcade in the nave, separating the western part of the church, intended for the laity, from the chancel, accessible exclusively to the clergy. The rood screen was of timber construction and had a loft, accessible by a staircase in the thickness of the northern wall. After the tower was built, its ground floor opened onto the nave with a pointed, double-chamfered arcade, with a continuous outer chamfer and an inner one supported by corbels in the form of peasants. An open roof truss spanned the nave, with arch braced collar beams and two rows of curved wind braces placed between the main rafters and the purlins. The chancel was likely also covered with an open roof truss in the Middle Ages.
The interior of the southern chapel was equipped with an altar, a wall-mounted tomb niche, and a piscina with a cinquefoil canopy. Beneath the floor was a crypt, accessible by nine steps. Originally lit by three small openings, it was covered by a stone arch running east to west, giving the room a height of about two meters at the arch’s crown. In total, the crypt housed approximately 200 human skeletons, some of which were buried in 13th-century stone coffins or sarcophagi.
Current state
Church of St. John in Llanblethian is one of the best-preserved medieval sacral buildings in Glamorgan. Its present form is the result of construction works carried out between the 12th and 15th centuries, although, like most Welsh churches, some of its original architectural details were replaced or renewed in the Victorian period. This applies particularly to the windows in the nave and the chancel arcade, as well as the chancel roof truss (the nave retains a late medieval truss, although restored in the 19th century). The rood screen has also been lost, leaving only a portal with a 15th-century door and steps leading to the loft. The oldest surviving architectural detail is the north window of the chancel, dating from the 12th century. The south windows date from the 13th or 14th century, while the chapel windows are from the slightly later 14th century. Late Gothic openings are visible in the tower walls and in the north wall of the nave, where the rood screen once stood. Inside, the arcade under the tower with figural corbels is worthy of attention.
bibliography:
Newman J., The buildings of Wales, Glamorgan, London 1995.
Orrin G.R., Medieval Churches of the Vale of Glamorgan, Cowbridge 1988.
Salter M., The old parish churches of Gwent, Glamorgan & Gower, Malvern 2002.