17424

 

II*  

Designated  

27/11/1953  

27/09/2001  

Church of St Dingat  

 

Monmouthshire  

Mitchel Troy  

Monmouth  

Dingestow  

345719  

210410  

 

About 5km WSW of Monmouth, on the N side of the junction of four minor roads, and close to the E side of the earthworks marking the site of Dingestow Castle.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

A C14 church almost entirely rebuilt, and slightly enlarged, in the mid- to late C19: the tower by T.H.Wyatt in 1846; the S wall, porch and chancel, new windows in the N wall, and added N transept all by Richard Creed in 1887-8.  

A very attractively sited parish church of modest proportions which, although now mostly of C19 construction, retains something of its irregular medieval character. Built of sandstone and conglomerate ("pudding-stone") rubble brought to courses, except the tower which is regularly-coursed; with freestone dressings and graduated stone slate roofs. It consists of a relatively low nave with a S porch and an added transept to the E end of its N side; a lower chancel; and a 3-stage W tower. This has diagonal buttresses, a cornice with sunk moulding, and stepped battlements; a large 2-centred arched and double-chamfered W doorway with a hollow-moulded hoodmould; a trefoil-headed 1-light window to the 2nd stage; and a slightly set-back belfry stage defined by string-courses, with a 2-centred arched belfry window of 2 trefoil lights with a quatrefoil in the head. The S side has a square-headed window of 2 trefoil lights to the 1st stage, but is otherwise the same; and the N and E sides have only cusped lancet belfry windows. The nave has on its S side a Victorian gabled porch with medieval-style timber-framed superstructure including arch-bracing to a brattished tie-beam; cusped bargeboarding; and a 2-centred arched inner doorway. To the left is a 1-light window with Perpendicular tracery; to the right, a small 2-centred arched window of 2 trefoil lights with a quatrefoil in the head; further right, a large square-headed 3-light window with cusped ogee-headed lights and shallow Perpendicular-style tracery in the head; and at a high level to the right of this is a very small cusped-ogee arched window (reproducing the lighting of a former rood loft). The chancel has a C19 2-centred arched priest door and a window of 2 trefoil lights; and a large 3-light E window with tracery. On the N side the nave has 3 Victorian lancet windows with trefoil tracery; the transept at its E end has a 2-centred arched N window with intersecting tracery, and in it W wall a very small 2-centred arched doorway.  

Simple nave with good medieval-style 5-bay crown-post collar-rafter roof, the rafters of the two W bays exposed but the others with wagon-roof board ceiling; a moulded 2-centred tower arch, and a similar chancel arch. The chancel has scored stucco lining to the walls, and 2 arch-braced roof trusses. The N transept (effectively the Bosanquet chapel) contains 4 benches with poppy-head bench-ends, and its E and W walls are lined with 7 monuments commemorating various members of the Bosanquet family of Dingestow Court, from 1806 to 1975, those of principal historical interest being: (1) a white marble tablet on the W wall, in a Gothick frame, with a long inscription commemorating Samuel Bosanquet of Forest House in Essex and Dingestow Court, d.1806; (2) a large Gothic arch in the E wall containing a standing monument with a seated figure of Faith comforting a grieving woman collapsed across her lap, commemorating the Rt Hon. Sir John Bernard Bosanquet (of the same), d.1847; (3) Samuel John Anson Bosanquet, Lieut.RNVR, only son of Sir Ronald and Lady Bosanquet, killed on active service 1944, aged 33 (father of the present owner of Dingestow Court). On the S wall of the nave there is also a monument to Samuel Richard Bosanquet, d.1882.  

Included as the principal architectural feature in the village of Dingestow, as an intelligent Victorian rebuild of the medieval original; and for its historical associations with the Bosanquet family of Dingestow Court (q.v.), expressed in a fine series of memorials.