Features Inside

On entering St. David’s church in Heyope the combination of light and pleasing proportion give an atmosphere of quiet dignity.

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Fifteenth Century Screen: The focal point of St David’s Church is its fifteenth century oak screen. It was described by Sir Stephen Glynne in the nineteenth century as “a fair wood screen of Perpendicular character.”
It has been carefully restored, but its rather worn appearance lends it a mellow charm.

It consists of five bays either side of a triangular headed entrance. The bays are divided by ogee moulded mullions and have vertical tracery in their heads.
The headbeam is moulded with rounds, hollows and ogees.
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The spandrels either side of the doorhead are carved with trefoils in circles. The doorhead and the rood (the cross) which surmounts it are not original.
The plain middle rail on the left side of the screen entrance is scratched with the initials R.W. and the name R.I. Williams.
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Roof

The Victorian pitch pine roof is fifteenth century in style. Its principal trusses have arch braced collars with cusped raking struts.

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Font

An octagonal sided font, probably fourteenth century, stands close to the south entrance. It rests upon its original stem and base, but its stone plinth and wooden cover are more recent.

Memorial

On the south wall is a 1796 touching memorial to an eleven-year-old boy and his siblings. It is painted on wood.

Pulpit and Lectern

The Victorian pulpit is enriched with carving, reflecting the tracery in the screen.
The lectern or ‘Reading Desk’ with its ‘Perpendicular’ traceried panels, was given by Mr Evans, a Heyope Schoolmaster when he retired, around 1930.

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Bells

Opposite the south entrance rests a redundant bell, now cracked, dating from the 14th century and comes from the workshop of John Martin of Worcester. Around the top in Lombardic capitals is the inscription:
(St Andrew, pray for us).
Heyope has two of only thirteen medieval bells in all of Radnorshire.
The two bells still in the bell tower are inscribed:
STA MA . . . PRO NBS [About 1330]
(Sancta Maria {Holy Mary}; pray for us)
SOLI DEO GLORA PAX HOMINIBUS [1670]
(To God alone glory and peace to men)

Tiles

A striking feature of the chancel is the Godwin manufactured tiling. William Godwin was a distinguished encaustic tile maker in this region in the nineteenth century. He established factories in Herefordshire at Lugwardine in 1848 and Withington in 1863. He provided tiling for many Radnorshire churches, including for George Gilbert Scott’s church at Norton.

The clever patterning and effective use of colour, ranging from red and buff to chocolate brown and orange ochre, contrive to produce tiling considered to be “the most splendid of all in the churches of Radnorshire.” That was the judgement in 2003 of Dr Mav Gill in the ‘Radnorshire Society Transactions.’

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Piscina and Sedilia

A medieval piscina was a stone basin normally set into the south wall of the chancel next to the altar. It was used for rinsing the communion vessels and for washing the priest’s hands. The nineteenth century replica is now used as a recess in which to place vessels used during Holy Communion.

A medieval sedilia provided seating for the priest and two assistants. Glynne descripts “an oblong recess”* on the south side of the altar in the old church. This was probably an ambry, a recess with a door for storing valuables and the reserve sacrament.

*Glynne. “Notes on the Older Churches in the Four Welsh Dioceses,” page 193.

String Course

A string course starts at the south wall at the screen and fades into the hood mould above the vestry arch.

Windows

Inside, the windows with their tinted leaded lights have shallow embrasures, deep base splays and wooden moulded soffits. The wooden soffits are fashioned from solid baulks of green oak.

Organ

The Rogers digital organ was acquired in 2006.

Two Chairs

Two chairs, seventeenth century in style, were donated by a former Irish rector, Canon B Chastel de Boinville, who had himself received them as a gift from friends in the Isle of Man. He was rector at Heyope between 1933 and 1941.

Needlwork

The brightly coloured and skilfully stitched kneelers were made by members of the congregation to celebrate the centenary of the rebuilding.

The altar frontals are beautifully embroidered with delicately coloured threads. This white frontal made of St David’s brocade was stitched in the 1970’s by Mrs Pam John and Mrs Lea of Beguildy.

The framed embroidery was lovingly worked for the millennium by Mary Wilding, former Churchwarden.

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Beacon Hill Benefice

Screen

Roof