History
The church in Llandawke was built in the early 13th century. It was probably a parish church within the Deanery of Stradtowy, functioning under the private patronage of the lords from the Laugharne Castle. The tower was probably added to the nave around the mid-16th century, as one of its bells was cast in 1552. By 1705 the building was said to be in a poor state of repair. It was renovated in the Victorian period, but major restoration work was not carried out until around 1906.
Architecture
The church was built of local red sandstone and limestone, and the roofs were made of slate. Initially, it consisted of a four-bay nave and a three-bay chancel, which was built lower and narrower than the nave. Both parts were erected on a rectangular plan. At the end of the Middle Ages, a quadrangular tower was added on the western side of the nave. It acquired small dimensions, referring to the small shape of the rest of the church. In its northern elevation, a projection was placed, housing a spiral staircase in the thickness of the wall.
The simple elevations of the church, not supported by buttresses and devoid of any decorations, were pierced with windows and one door. The entrance was set in the southern wall of the nave, where initially there must have been a simple 13th-century late Romanesque portal, replaced around the beginning of the 14th century by a pointed Gothic portal with a slight chamfer and a relieving arch above. Unusually, the entrance was not placed in the ground floor of the tower. Its walls did not receive a batter with a cornice popular in the region. It is possible that the tower also never had an open gallery with a battlemented parapet, which was common in medieval Wales, instead of which a hip roof was used.
The original windows of the nave and chancel may have been very narrow, splayed, perhaps still with a semicircular or possibly lancet-shaped heads. In the late Middle Ages, all of them were replaced with larger ones, in various shapes: quadrangular, two-light, with trefoil tracery inscribed in pointed arches, as well as pointed, two-light, with additional tracery motifs under the archivolts. The most impressive window was traditionally set in the eastern wall of the chancel, where the opening was divided by a shaft into two high parts with trefoils, and above them were placed two more tracery trefoils with pointed petals and an asymmetrical quatrefoil with three semicircular petals and one pointed petal.
Inside, both the nave and the chancel were covered with an open roof truss. Both parts were separated in the 13th century by a very simple and low arcade with a semicircular, unmoulded archivolt. An element of the original equipment was also a piscina in the southern wall of the chancel, created in a semicircular niche with a moulded polygonal bowl. Next to it, in the 14th century, a tomb niche was set in the wall with a pointed, chamfered archivolt supported by two mask-shaped corbels. Probably in the later Middle Ages, the nave and the chancel were separated by a rood screen, which was equipped with a loft on the first floor, set on two stone corbels. Access to it was possible by stairs from the chancel and then by a passage in the chancel west wall. The ground floor of the tower was opened to the nave by a very narrow pointed arcade with a lowered archivolt boss.
Current state
The picturesque church has retained its original perimeter walls and many medieval architectural details to this day. The restoration works carried out on it were limited to faithful replication of the original windows from the 15th/16th centuries, re-roofing and plastering the interior. The tower windows were partially transformed. On the left side of the entrance portal from the early 14th century there is a rectangular window in the Perpendicular Gothic style, and on the right side there is a pointed window in the Decorated Gothic style with modern tracery. There are also a late Gothic windows in the southern and eastern walls of the chancel and on the northern side of the nave and chancel. Inside the chancel there is a preserved piscina and chancel arcade from 13th century and a 14th century niche, in which a tombstone was previously located. On the northern side there is a 14th century figurative tombstone of Margaret Marlos, niece of Sir Guy de Brian of Laugharne Castle, unfortunately cut into three pieces by thieves. The church also contains a stone from the 5th or 6th century with Latin and Ogham inscriptions.
bibliography:
Ludlow N., Carmarthenshire Churches, An Overview of the Churches in Carmarthenshire, Llandeilo 2000.
Ludlow N., Carmarthenshire Churches, Church Reports, Llandeilo 2000.
Salter M., The old parish churches of South-West Wales, Malvern 2003.
The Royal Commission on The Ancient and Historical Monuments and Constructions in Wales and Monmouthshire. An Inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire, V County of Carmarthen, London 1917.