Welsh Journals

PENNANT MELANGELL PART 7 Paintings and Inscriptions in Pennant Melangell Church A.J. Parkinson1 with a note by D. Watkinson Pennant Melangell church contains traces of painting from every major phase of the church's existence medieval, post-medieval and Victorian. Only the most recent paintings have survived to the present in anything like a complete form, but enough remained to give some idea of the overall effect. In the following report, the paintings will be considered chronologically. Medieval Twelve patches of dark purplish-red ochre were identified painted on white limewash directly on the stone wall face on the south side of the east wall of the chancel (fig. 4.21, nos 2-10,12- 14). These were mostly too small to be intelligible but they included three stencilled formal flowers (palmettes rather than fleurs-de-lis), almost certainly from a single stencil (fig. 7.1). The location suggests a formal diapering of the whole wall. Traces of a single line (fig. 4.21, no. 14) might indicate a 'false ashlar' pattern, perhaps with the flowers in the blocks (as at Michaelstone-y-Fedw, Monmouthshire, and Lamphey Palace, Pembrokeshire). These and other parallels suggest a 13th-century date. Traces of similar dark purplish-red paint on the stones of the shrine may be from similar patterning, also of 13th-century date.2 Traces of painting on the south side of the inner face of the arch (fig. 4.21, no. 15) are almost certainly medieval, and also possibly of 13th-century date. This line work in black and red might be a vertical band of patterning, as at Llandeilo Talybont, Glamorgan. Decorative bands on the southern impost in yellow, red and white (fig. 4.21, no. 16) may be paralleled at Ewenny Priory, Glamorgan. Sixteenth-seventeenth centuries The description by Hancock indicates that inscriptions in black-letter script were found during the restoration of 1876/77, none of which are now visible. They were probably early 17th century, and possibly contemporary with the lychgate inscription noted below. They may, however, have been the same as that observed by Glynne, who in 1848 noted 'black letter inscription in Welsh, A.D. 1555'on the north wall of the church. This date is intriguingly early but quite possible, since the first printed Welsh liturgical text dates from 1546. This lettering is no longer visible but must have been on the west end of the north wall as the rest had been rebuilt in 1635. Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments. Crown Building. Plas Crug, Aberystwyth. Dyfed. 2See also Part 8, p. 149. T.W. Hancock, Pennant Melangell: its parochial history and antiquities, Montgomeryshire Collections 12 (1879), 64. S.R. Glynne, Notes on the older churches in the four Welsh dioceses, Archaeologia Cambrensis 2 (1885), 120. P.T.J. Morgan, Beibl i Gxtnru: A Bible for Wales. (Pwyllgor Dathlu Pedwarcanmlwyddiant y Beibl/Gwasg Cambria, 1988), 20. "See Part 5, p. 113.