History
The late Gothic church of St. David in Llywel was built in the 15th century, although its origins may have been much earlier, as indicated by an early medieval font located in it. According to tradition, the original parish church was founded in the 5th century by St. Llywel and dedicated to David, Padarn, and Teilo, giving rise to the alternative name Llantrisant (Church of Three Saints). The new dedication may have been given in the 13th century, when the church was transferred to the chapter of St Davids, or slightly earlier, after being rebuilt after a fire that, according to the chronicler Gerald of Wales, destroyed the church in the 12th century. The nave and chancel were built or extensively rebuilt around 1480-1520, while the tower may have been built in the 14th century, but it was modified in the following century. A porch was added in the 16th century. During the early modern period, the church avoided major alterations. It was restored in 1869 and again in 1877-1878.
Architecture
The church was built in a valley on the western side of the small Gwydderig River. By the late Middle Ages, it consisted of a single rectangular and significantly elongated nave, a slightly narrower and a significantly shorter, also rectangular chancel on the eastern side, a tower situated on the western side of the nave, and a porch erected at the entrance in the southern wall of the nave. The entire structure was orientated to the cardinal sides of the world, with a gradation of height typical of rural parish churches, from the highest tower in the west to the lowest chancel in the east. Medium and large-sized fragments of irregular red and occasionally gray sandstone were used as building material.
The quadrangular tower was supported at the base by a prominent batter, topped by a semicircular cornice. Thanks to this, the solid walls did not require buttresses, despite their considerable height. Tower was crowned with a parapet and battlements, projecting slightly from the face of the lower walls. On the southeast side, the tower received a smaller, quadrangular turret with a staircase, higher than the main part of the tower and terminating in its own parapet, from behind which observation and guard functions could be performed. The tower’s windows were not large, closed with trefoils, sometimes framed by quadrangular surrounds. On the top floor on each side, a two-light window was placed. A pointed portal was pierced through the ground floor on the west, flanked by a plinth wall and crowned at the top by three consoles supporting a section of the cornice.
In the 15th century, the church was illuminated by large pointed windows, filled with three-light, trefoil-shaped tracery set into ogee arches, above which were smaller openings shaped like fish bladders. A larger, four-light window with similar tracery was created in the eastern wall of the chancel. The entrance to the nave was placed in the southern wall, rather unusually, in the middle of its length, rather than closer to the western part. It led through the aforementioned porch and the handsome, full-height moulded, Tudor-style portal. A second, segmental portal was created in the southern wall of the chancel for the priest.
The nave was fitted with a shallow projection in the eastern part of the northern wall, housing a loft, or gallery, for the timber rood screen, which originally separated the laity from the clergy. Furthermore, the nave and chancel were separated by a low chancel arcade with a moulded archivolt and a slightly flattened pointed arch. Both sections were covered with wooden barrel roofs with arched ribs forming a checkerboard of rectangular panels. From the west, the nave opened with a deep, pointed arcade without moulding, pierced by the massive wall of the tower.
Current state
The church in Llywel boasts very few 19th-century alterations, retaining its late Gothic silhouette and architectural details. Most of the 15th-century windows, the gargoyles projecting from the tower parapet, the tower’s ground floor portal, the porch portal and the nave entrance portal, including the original door, have survived. Inside, you can see two 5th- to 6th-century stones carved with Ogham and Latin inscriptions (the church currently houses a copy of one, while the original is in the British Museum in London), as well as the stocks from the late 18th century.
bibliography:
Haslam R., The buildings of Wales. Powys (Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire, Breconshire), London 1979.
Salter M., The old parish churches of Mid-Wales, Malvern 1997.