9386

 

II  

Designated  

30/11/1966  

22/10/2003  

Church of St Michael  

 

Carmarthenshire  

Abergwili  

 

Llanfihangel-uwch-gwili  

248909  

222882  

 

An isolated church on the S side of a minor road approximately 1.2km NNW of Nantgaredig.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

Nave and chancel are of medieval origin and the tower is post-medieval, but the detail belongs mainly to a restoration of 1906, as do the internal fixtures.  

A small, simple Gothic style church comprising nave with lower and narrower chancel and W tower. Walls are rubble stone with freestone dressings and red sandstone quoins, the roof is slate. The 3-stage tower is slightly battered to the base and has a corbelled NE stair turret incorporated in the nave wall. It has a pointed S doorway with continuous chamfer and boarded door. In the W face a window to the ringing chamber comprises 2 round-headed lights under a drip mould set well above. All faces have narrow belfry openings. The pyramidal roof has a finial. The nave has two 2-light windows, with pointed quatrefoil tracery light, but not symmetrically placed. To the L of the windows is a blocked former S doorway. In the chancel S wall is another blocked doorway, and a small medieval cusped window now infilled. The 3-light E window has intersecting tracery. A gabled vestry is on the N side, which has a 2-light N window with doorway to its R, and an E doorway with boarded door. The nave has 2 cusped N windows.  

The nave has a plastered wagon roof, tall plain plastered tower arch and similarly plain but chamfered chancel arch. The chancel has a polygonal boarded wagon roof. A pointed ribbed N door leads to the vestry. The painted octagonal font is C19. Plain pews have moulded ends and choir stalls have poppy heads. Simple wooden communion rail. There are 2 wall tablets. In the chancel N wall is a memorial to Daniel Davies (d 1828) comprising a marble sarcophagus on slate background. The chancel S wall has a memorial to the Rev Thomas Thomas (d 1926), a simple classical tablet on a slate background, by A M Lewis.  

Listed as a small rural parish church retaining Edwardian character.