History
The stone church in Llanfihangel y Creuddyn was built in the 14th century as a chapelry church, probably owned by the bishops of St Davids. It was extended in the 15th century, when a massive tower was erected. Victorian renovation was carried out in the years 1870-1874. During this, unfortunately, all the portals and windows were replaced, and a porch was built in place of the older vestibule. Then, at the end of the 19th century, renovation and construction work was carried out on the tower, on which a spire was erected and the parapet was slightly lowered. In 1904, a sacristy was added to the church, and in 1933 an underground boiler room.
Architecture
The church was built on a Latin cross plan, consisting of a rectangular nave, transept and chancel on a plan close to a square. It had a form similar to the churches at Llanbardarn Fawr and Llanddewi Brefi, where shallow transepts were also built, very popular in the 14th century in Wales. The individual parts of St. Michael’s church may have been built at intervals, as the walls of the chancel were framed at the base by a batter with a cornice, an element that the nave was not equipped with.
The interior of the church was accessible through a portal placed in the western part of the southern wall of the nave, perhaps preceded by a small porch in the Middle Ages. Another entrance portal was probably located in the southern gable wall of the transept. Originally, the church could have been lit by pointed, relatively narrow and splayed towards the interior windows, some of which were probably replaced with late Gothic ones in the late Middle Ages. The window in the style of English Perpendicular Gothic could have been installed in the eastern and southern walls of the chancel, while the transept and nave were described as dark, so it were probably based on 14th-century openings until the end of the Middle Ages. At the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, the nave, chancel and transept were covered with wooden wagon roofs, built on the site of older ones or built to cover the open roof truss.
At the crossing, all parts of the church were separated by high arcades with pointed archivolts set on impost cornices. In the 15th century, a quadrangular tower was erected above them, exceptionally massive in relation to the rest of the building. The interior of the tower above the ground floor accommodated three storeys, separated by wooden ceilings and accessible by means of a spiral staircase set in the north-eastern corner of the crossing. Two of the storeys were lit only by small slits. Larger windows were found only on the top storey with the bells. Above them, the walls were topped with a parapet typical of Wales, set on corbels jutting out from the face.
Current state
The church today has medieval perimeter walls of the nave, transept, chancel and a 15th-century tower, which is striking in its considerable size for a rural religious building. Early modern and modern additions include a sacristy on the north side of the chancel and a porch in front of the southern entrance to the nave. Most of the window and door frames have been renewed or modified, with the exception of the slit openings in the tower. A copy of the original window may be the 19th-century jamb of the opening in the north wall of the chancel. Inside, a barrel-shaped, wagon roof truss from around 1500 has been preserved, used in the nave, transept and chancel. The arcades under the towers are also medieval, probably dating from the 14th century.
bibliography:
Glynne S.R., Notes on the Older Churches in the Four Welsh Dioceses, „Archaeologia Cambrensis”, 2/1885.
Ludlow N., Ceredigion Churches, Llandeilo 2000.
Salter M., The old parish churches of South-West Wales, Malvern 2003.
Wooding J., Yates N., A Guide to the churches and chapels of Wales, Cardiff 2011.