The Church of St David is a parish church in

Llanddewi Rhydderch Llanddewi Rhydderch is a village in Monmouthshire, Wales at OS . It is off the B4233 road, roughly southeast of Abergavenny, lying within the administrative community of Gobion Fawr. History The township of Llanddewi Rhydderch grew around ...

Monmouthshire Monmouthshire ( ; ) is a Principal areas of Wales, county in the South East Wales, south east of Wales. It borders Powys to the north; the English counties of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire to the north and east; the Severn Estuary to the s ...

Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...

, with origins in the 12th century; the tower base may date from this time. The fabric of the current building is 14th–15th century in date, with a Victorian restoration by

John Pollard Seddon John Pollard Seddon FRIBA (19 September 1827 – 1 February 1906) was a British architect, working largely on churches. Life His father was a cabinetmaker, and his brother, Thomas Seddon (1821–1856), was a landscape painter. Born in London, ...

in 1862 and 1863. It remains an active parish church.

History

The origins of the building are

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 9th and 10th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norma ...

, with the base of the tower, and some of its lancet windows appearing to date from this time. The body of the church is later, of the 14th and 15th centuries. J. P. Seddon undertook a sensitive restoration in 1862–63. There have been few alterations since this time and the church remains an active church in the parish of Llanddewi Rhydderch.

Architecture and description

The church is built of

Old Red Sandstone Old Red Sandstone, abbreviated ORS, is an assemblage of rocks in the North Atlantic region largely of Devonian age. It extends in the east across Great Britain, Ireland and Norway, and in the west along the eastern seaboard of North America. It ...

. The building comprises a

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

, porch and a tower with a "

pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...

al cap of "typical

Border Borders are generally defined as geography, geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by polity, political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other administrative divisio ...

design". The church is a

Grade II* listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

, its listing record describing it as a "medieval church sensitively restored".

Notes

References

* {{Church in Wales template

History of Monmouthshire

John Prichard buildings