St Michael, Golden Grove

      Gelli Aur (Golden Grove) is a attractive, somewhat straggling village on the southern side of the Towy valley. An estate village, serving the mansion of Gelli Aur the home, in turn, of the Vaughans and the Cawdors.  It was the 1st Earl Cawdor who commissioned the church.

      St Michael's was built in the late 1840s, the work of that eminent and incredibly prolific Victorian architect George Gilbert Scott Snr.  It is not at all flashy but a simple two cell building with porch and vestry. It all looks rather 'natural', a quality often lacking in Victorian churches including those by Scott.  There has been a church on the site since the beginning of the 17th century, when the original parish church down in the valley was abandoned. In terms of style St Michael's is early Dec and with its little wooden bellcote looks as though is has strayed from the Welsh Marches. Don't let that put off any visit, because the interior is a wonderful time capsule. I doubt it's been altered much since construction, and the place is full of the most charming details.  A great example of a moderate Tractarian interior, rather serious, though with attention to those important details and elements of sumptuousness, and inventiveness, that lift it beyond the ordinary.  Decoration is concentrated, rightly, in the chancel.  The encaustic tiles, for instance, are a treat. The only jarring notes are firstly the red carpet in the nave and the secondly the reredos, complete with gradine and fake tabernacle, and which dates from between the wars, and is completely alien to the Tractarian ethos.