History
Church of St. Madoc in Llanmadoc was erected in the 12th or 13th century on the site of an early Christian temple from the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century. The village, and with it the church, from 1156 were the property of the Knights Templar. After the dissolution of the order in the fourteenth century, Llanmadoc became the property of the Knights Chospitaller. The church was significantly rebuilt in 1865-1866.
Architecture
Built of sandstone, the church at the end of the Middle Ages consisted of a rectangular nave, a shorter and narrower rectangular chancel on the eastern side, a slender tower on the west side and a porch at the southern entrance to the nave. The tower was erected on a square plan and crowned with a decorative battlement mounted from the north and south on corbels protruding from the walls. The façades of the tower were pierced only with a single slit window from the west and one from the north. The remaining windows of the nave and chancel were originally narrow and long, but topped with trefoils.
Current state
The only original medieval window of the church has been preserved in the southern wall of the chancel. The remaining windows were transformed in the 19th century. The tower is currently quite low, so some authors suggest that it was not reconstructed to its full height in the 19th century. A stone with inscriptions from the 6th century was built into the sill of the nave’s window, another stone from the 7th-9th centuries can be found in the western wall. Inside the church, fragments of medieval wall polychromes have also been preserved.
bibliography:
Salter M., The old parish churches of Gwent, Glamorgan & Gower, Malvern 2002.
Website gatehouse-gazetteer.info, Llanmadoc Church of St Madoc.