St Issui's Church, Partrishow

Issui was an early Welsh saint who lived by the well next to the site of the church.[1] Following his murder, the well became a place of pilgrimage and the church was founded with the offerings of pilgrims in 1060.[1] Gerald of Wales is reputed to have preached at the church in 1188 while on his tour of Wales.[1] The church was undamaged during the Reformation, the dual altars being spared by the order of Edward VI in 1550.[2] The church similarly escaped any large-scale Victorian reconstruction and was carefully restored by W. D. Caröe in 1908–1909.[3] The church remains an active church in the parish of the Vale of Grwyne.[4]

"The most perfect and elegant rood loft now standing in the kingdom" (Scourfield & Haslam)

The church comprises a nave, chancel and porch with a separate shrine-chapel to the West.[2] The walls are of rubble[3] and the roofs of slate.[2] The style throughout is Gothic.[3] The wall to the right of the porch has a rare stone bench facing the preaching cross in the churchyard.[3] The bellcote holds two bells[3] and is a stone replacement by Caröe for the timber original.[2]

The nave has a roof of the 16th century.[2] It is windowless to the North, with windows of a Tudor date inserted in the South wall.[1] The wagon roof of the chancel is a replacement by Caröe.[2] The rood screen is the highlight of the interior. In the Powys volume of The Buildings of Wales series, the architectural historians Richard Scourfield and Robert Haslam record a description of it as, "the most perfect and elegant now standing in the kingdom".[2] It dates from 1500 and was sensitively restored by Caröe.[2] It stretches the entire width of the nave, and has a frieze of dragons or wyverns expectorating vines. The writer Simon Jenkins describes it as "exquisitely wrought".[1]

In addition to the rood screen, the church has a significant collection of wall paintings. They comprise four groups: a Stuart Coat of Arms[2] which the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales considers are those of James I; two groups of Biblical texts, including the Lord's Prayer, the Decalogue and the Apostles' Creed; and a "Doom Figure"[2] of Death as a skeleton with an hourglass in his left hand and a knife in his right, which dates from the 17th century.[5]

The church is a Grade I listed building.[3] A number of structures in the vicinity of the church have their own Grade II listings including St Issui's Well,[6] the churchyard cross,[7] the former stable,[8] and the lych gate.[9]

• Jenkins, Simon (2008). Wales: Churches, Houses, Castles. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-713-99893-1.
• Scourfield, Robert; Richard, Haslam (2013). Powys: Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire and Breconshire. The Buildings of Wales. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-18508-9. OCLC 935421607.

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