History
The first parish church in Myddfai was built after the Anglo-Norman conquest of south-west Wales. It may have been founded by the Wroth family, who initially held patronage over the church. They lost it in 1291, when the family’s property was confiscated by King Edward I. The ruler then entrusted the right of patronage to the bishops of St Davids, at whose initiative an early Gothic nave and chancel were built in the late 13th century or in the 14th century. Around 1500, the building was enlarged by the aisle and a north chapel, and in the 16th or 17th century by a porch. In the first half of the 19th century, during renovations, a sacristy and a western bellcote were added. Further, small-scale repairs took place at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century and in 1874. The last three windows were replaced with new ones between 1917 and 1926.
Architecture
The church from the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries consisted of an elongated, rectangular nave and a slightly narrower and lower, square chancel on the eastern side. It therefore presented a typical layout for a rural sacral building from the turn of Romanesque and early Gothic. Both parts of the church were covered with separate gable roofs, with the chancel standing out with a roof set on a row of stone corbels at the northern and southern walls. In addition, the walls of the chancel were surrounded on the outside with a batter and inside with stone benches. The entrance to the church was situated in a traditional place, in the western part of the southern wall of the nave. Initially, lighting could have been provided by small, splayed windows with lancet-shaped heads. Inside, the nave and chancel were connected by a pointed arcade with an archivolt without moulding, set on imposts.
At the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, a rectangular aisle was added to the north, which, interestingly, received its own chancel or chapel to the east, with proportions similar to the older chancel. The entire church was distinguished from then on by an extensive spatial program, as for a village church located far from large urban centers, although from the outside it had a simple form with straight elevations to the west, north and east. In a typical Welsh manner, each part of the building was covered with its own gable roof, supported on undecorated triangular gables at the shorter walls. In the walls of the aisle and chapel, pointed late Gothic windows were set, filled with three-light tracery with cinquefoil motifs. Late Gothic windows were also inserted into the older walls of the church.
The late Gothic northern part of the church was opened to the nave with four pointed arcades, supported by three octagonal pillars and two wall half-pillars. The archivolts of the arcades were moulded with grooves and chamfers on both sides, and the very narrow capitals of the inter-nave pillars were also decorated with moulding. The chancel was connected to the northern chapel by a single wide and moulded arcade. Its arch was set on two semi-octagonal half-pillars, similarly to the nave with narrow moulded capitals. The chapel was also connected to the northern aisle by an arcade of a similar form.
During the late medieval expansion, the old nave and chancel were covered with wooden wagon roofs, with only transverse frames placed between the plastered fields in the nave, and transverse and longitudinal frames in the chancel. In addition, the nave was separated from the chancel by a rood screen, for which a small, low-set pointed window was specially placed in the southern wall of the nave. The rood screen had a loft with a gallery, accessible by southern wooden stairs. The northern aisle and the chapel were topped with wagon roofs of an identical form to those in the chancel.
Current state
The church has retained the spatial layout finally obtained in the late Middle Ages, only slightly disturbed by the modern sacristy added from the north-west and the porch from the beginning of the 17th century. The late Gothic windows were made of red sandstone, which distinguishes them today from the modern ones, built of grey sandstone (Victorian windows in the southern and western elevations). Inside the church, attention is drawn to the preserved original pillars and arcades between the nave and aisle, the chancel arcade, the piscina and the medieval covering in the form of wagon roofs over all the main parts of the building. Among the equipment, an octagonal font from the 14th century has been preserved.
bibliography:
Ludlow N., Carmarthenshire Churches, Church Reports, Llandeilo 2000.
Ludlow N., Carmarthenshire Churches, An Overview of the Churches in Carmarthenshire, 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.
Wooding J., Yates N., A Guide to the churches and chapels of Wales, Cardiff 2011.