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St Nicholas's Church, New Moat

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NPRN402719
Map ReferenceSN02NE
Grid ReferenceSN0624325243
Unitary (Local) AuthorityPembrokeshire
Old CountyPembrokeshire
CommunityNew Moat
Type Of SiteCHURCH
PeriodPost Medieval
Description
Although retaining some medieval fabric throughout the structure, the church was largely rebuilt, with the exception of the fifteenth-century tower, on its medieval foundations during a restoration in 1884-86. Prior to the restoration, an 1883 visit by the Cambrian Archaeological Association found the church had `much of interest, but, appears to be little cared for?, the chancel having been separated from the nave by an iron gate and used as a `sort of lumber-room where the disused bells are stored? (Arch. Camb. 4: xiv (1883), 339-40). The church consists of a nave, chancel, western tower, shallow southern porch, and northern aisle which does not run the full length of the church, ending before reaching the western end of the nave. The church is entered through a shallow porch with a steep Bathstone gable centrally placed in the nave. The church is built of rubble with some older, medieval masonry, and is roofed with slates (formerly with Pembrokeshire stone tiles) with cross finials made of iron on the eastern gables of nave, chancel, and aisle. The nave has a two-staged buttress, and there is a corresponding buttress on the aisle which is combined with the corbelled base of a short chimney. The eastern face of the church is double-gabled, with a three-light Decorated-style window with elongated quatrefoil in the chancel and a two-light, flat-headed window with shoulder lights above which is a detached roundel with an inset trefoil in the aisle. The western tower is tall and tapering with battlemented parapet. The belfry is lit by pairs of arched lights with slated louvres and there are a pair of lancet windows over the late-nineteenth-century western door. Inside, the nave roof has six bays with arch-braced trusses and king-posts with raked struts. The chancel roof is similar. The square, scalloped font basin is probably Norman, and has been redressed and sits on a new base. There were several monuments to members of the Scourfield family in the church, of which a few survive including an alter tomb to Willaim Scourfield (d. 1621), in the chancel. Under the chancel is a plain barrel-vaulted crypt containing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century lead coffins of members of the Scourfield family dating from 1787, some with coats of arms and velvet hangings. There are also the bones of a greyhound who is said to have died of starvation in the crypt under his master's coffin. There is a greyhound on the Scourfield coat of arms.

(Sources: Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire: Pembroke (RCAHMW: 1925), vol. II, pp. 268-69; Cadw listed buildings database).
A.N. Coward, RCAHMW, 18.04.18