St Mary, Llanywern

St Mary’s Church at Llan-y-wern, in the community of Llangors, Powys, is a Grade II* medieval church little restored in the nineteenth century, in the Diocese of Swansea and Brecon.

Overview

Cadw records an Early Christian site dedicated to St Cynidr. The dedication changed to St Mary when the church became a chapel of ease to St John’s Priory, Brecon, in the fourteenth century. Existing masonry is not easily dated; Buildings of Wales treats it as fourteenth century, with windows probably of the seventeenth century and a post-medieval porch. The building is a simple low rectangle of stone rubble under a banded Welsh slate roof, with a large west porch, a small west bellcote, and two deep full-height buttresses on the north nave wall.

The interior escaped Victorian restoration. A scissor-braced nave has a five-sided wagon roof; the chancel retains a late-medieval boarded ceiling with reeded ribs and traces of red paint on the rood beams. Wainscot behind the altar is dated 1657. The font is a plain bowl with a short stem. Cadw lists the church II* as a scarce unrestored small medieval church, with group value with Ty Mawr and Ty Canol. The church is lit by oil lamps.

Further Information

• Cadw listed building 6770
• Church in Wales: St Mary, Llanywern
• Coflein NPRN 405964