The old church at Penallt is set in a little dip in the trees about a mile north of the village (see map). Most of the building is late medieval, with a sixteenth-century porch (the date on the door is 1539). Inside, the wagon roof has carved bosses with intriguing symbols - strange heads, the Instruments of the Crucifixion, three fish symbolising the Trinity. There is also a splendid early seventeenth-century pulpit. Outside, you can see the base of the churchyard cross.

No-one knows who the church is dedicated to. One local tradition is that it was St James, the patron saint of pilgrims: so Penallt could have been a staging-post on the route to St James’s great shrine at Compostela.

The Parish of Trellech and Penallt encompasses St Nicholas's Church at Trellech and the Penallt Old Church.

Details of services at Penallt Old Church may be found here, and electronic copies of Parish newsletters are available here also.