Llandough : St Dochdwy's Church

I noticed this church long before I got around to visiting it. That’s because its location, high on a hill overlooking the city of Cardiff, means its distinctive tower is visible from quite a distance, and it was my curiosity about that tower which prompted my visit.

The tower, and its church, St Dochdwy's, are in Llandough, a small hamlet that has been a holy place for a very long time – the clue is in its name: in Welsh, Llan is church and dough is from dochau, as in Saint Dochau/Dochdwy. The St Dochdwy's Church website dates the earliest Christian worship here to the 5th and 6th centuries, and notes that the ‘first permanent church building was erected in the 12th century’.

I was even more impressed with this tower when a bat came flying out of that side window, in broad daylight!

Amazingly, that first building continued in use until the 19th century when not one, but two new churches were built on the site. The first was built around 1820 but, just 40 years later, was found to be too small for the congregation so was deconstructed, moved and rebuilt, stone by stone, in the nearby village of Leckwith. The present church, with its notable saddle-back bell tower, was consecrated in 1866. David Jones of Penarth was in charge of construction, and its design was executed by Samuel Charles Fripp, an architect from Bristol.

I haven’t been inside St Dochdwy's, as, like so many churches these days, it is locked when not in use, but I did enjoy a good wander around the outside of the building and explored the graveyard that surrounds it. In the entry for the church on the Coflein website (Coflein is the online database for the National Monuments Record of Wales), the exterior of the building is described as having ‘snecked rubble facings with slate roofs and freestone dressings.’ (If you’re not familiar with the term ‘snecked rubble’, as I wasn’t, it means masonry that has a mixture of squared stones of different sizes, as you can see in the photo above.)

As I have a fondness for ornate ironwork door hinges, I was quite taken with the examples on the main entrance door. And, during my circuit of the building, I discovered the narrowest church door I’ve ever seen – I’m not sure what its purpose would have been but it would certainly have encouraged any who needed to use it to stay lean.

To be honest, I found the church building rather underwhelming compared to its impressive tower, but there is one item in the churchyard which is particularly stunning and which warrants a blog post all of its own. That will follow very soon.