St Mary the Virgin

Lovely church and astonishing location... Very warm welcome with cup of tea/ coffee and biscuits if you wish donate.

Beautiful little church, open to the public, windows are fantastic and interia lovely. Grounds are full of old stone and metal grave markers and some new ones at the back. Well kept. Small parking area in the front.

Very old church set in a small Valley in mid Wales. Steeped in local history with beautiful stained glass windows

Lovely church and village

Founded in 1680, and seemingly then dedicated to St Bridget, one of the rare post-medieval, pre-19thC establishments in region. Williams (in 1818) records a tradition that the monks of Cwmhir Abbey had a fish pond at the spot. The abbey itself may have been extensively quarried to provide materials for the new church. The church of St Mary in Abbey Cwm-hir was built in 1865 by Mary Beatrice Phillips, sister of the squire. We do not know where the abbey tenants worshipped before the Dissolution or in the years after. In 1680, William Fowler built the first parish church, but by 1860 it had fallen into decay. (This was the William Fowler immortalised in the rhyme: Radnorshire, poor Radnorshire, Never a park and never a deer, And never a man of five hundred a year Except Sir William Fowler of Abbey Cwm-hir. The new church is ornately gothic in style, with coloured bands in the stonework and an elaborate tower over the porch. Over the door is a copy of a weatherworn tympanum which was found in the abbey ruins. The copy on the church interprets it as a picture of the Ascension, but modern scholars think it more likely that the original depicts the Assumption of the Virgin. As well as this copy, the church houses much of the carved stone rescued from the abbey. The strangely-named Happy Union Inn, over the road from the church, is a Regency building with iron Gothic windows. The same style of building and windows can be found all through the village, including the house and farm buildings at the Home Farm. Abbey Cwm-hir Hall is later, of the same period as the church and with similar multicoloured masonry and slates.