The architect was Robert Jewell Withers and the patron Sir Thomas Lloyd.

[1] Lloyd, a landowner and Member of Parliament for Cardiganshire, claimed descent from the ancient Lords of Cemaes[2] and spent a considerable amount of his inheritance in pursuit of a peerage and in the construction of a number of buildings on his estate in a Gothic Revival style, including his home, Bronwydd Castle,[3] the court house at Felindre Farchog,[4] the restoration of the genuinely medieval castle at Newport[3] and the little church of St Dogfael.

Lloyd, Orbach and Scourfield, in their Pembrokeshire volume of the Buildings of Wales Pevsner, describe it as "an object lesson in High Victorian geometry and minimal extraneous detail".

[6] It is built of sandstone, with Bath stone dressings and a slate roof.

[5] Constructed on the site of an earlier church,[1] the north doorway may a genuine Norman piece, or a later medieval one, from the original structure.