St Edmund, Crickhowell

     Back to the lovely Usk valley and a family celebration.  While the rest of the family were ascending Pen-y-Fan the bf and I made our first visit to the charming small town of Crickhowell, that lies between Brecon and Abergavenny.  There is some fine domestic architecture - early 19th century by the look of it and redolent of the rattle of the mail coach. It was very busy what with people and, less happily, traffic - the A40 passes through the town - too busy to take photographs. 

     However off the main street, and reached by a couple of narrow lanes, and much quieter, stands the parish church of St Edmund, built of New Red Sandstone. Rather Herefordshire in style.  Cruciform and with that rarity in Wales, a spire.  'The Buildings of Wales' volume on Powys suggests that this might be a post-Reformation addition. Work on the church however commenced soon after 1306 when the site for the church was donated by Lady Sibyl Pauncefoot. Her monument is on the n side of the chancel; to the s is the monument to Sir Grimbald Pauncefoot, who I presume is the good Lady Sibyl's husband. Otherwise, apart from the monument to Sir John & Lady Joan Herbert (also in the chancel) the interior is somewhat dull and barren. In the second half of the nineteenth century it underwent restoration at the hands of John Loughborough Pearson. (We've come across his work before at adjoining parishes of Burley-on-the-Hill and Exton in Rutland.)