[1] It is set on a hillside above the River Monnow about 6 1/4 miles (10 km) northwest of Monmouth.

[2] The earliest record of a monastery on the site is in the seventh century, but it is with the arrival of the Knights Templar in 1180 that the history of the church at Garway becomes clearer.

Brooks and Pevsner, in the 2012 revision to the Herefordshire volume of the Buildings of England, describe St Michael's as "uncommonly interesting".

There are numerous carvings both inside and outside the building including a green man, a sword believed to be Templar, a fish and a snake.

Garway is referenced in The Fabric of Sin, a novel by Phil Rickman, and in Bernard Knight's chapter in King Arthur's Bones by The Medieval Murderers.