It may have replaced an earlier Saxon church at the same site, and the oval raised form of the churchyard is typical of even older Celtic foundations.

Around the 6th and 7th centuries the Kilpeck (Welsh: Llanddewi Cil Peddeg) area was within the British kingdom of Ergyng, which maintained Christian traditions dating back to the late Roman period.

At the time the current church was built, the area around Kilpeck, known as Archenfield, was relatively prosperous and strategically important, in the heart of the Welsh Marches.

[1] The carvings in the local red sandstone are remarkable for their number and their fine state of preservation, particularly round the south door, the west window, and along a row of corbels which run right around the exterior of the church under the eaves.

He was steward to the Lord of Wigmore, Hugh Mortimer, who went on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain and, on his return, built a church with similar Romanesque carvings (now largely lost) at Shobdon, 30 miles north of Kilpeck.

In the centre of the corbel table below the window, and at each corner of the nave's west wall, are large protruding dragons' heads with coiled tongues.

There is a massive baptismal font of polished conglomerate, a curious holy water stoup, shaped like a fat, tightly girdled torso (brought from a chapel near Wormbridge), and a rare Romanesque font-stopper.

[7] Jeff Nuttall, in his 1954 unpublished Masters thesis, The Church of St. Mary & St. David Kilpeck, concluded that: "My intended detachment was completely destroyed.

It stood unavoidably as a work of art, the timeless expression of a vision experienced under that same sun which now winked at me through the deep yew tree."

The carving is the subject of the poem "Sheila Na Gig at Kilpeck" by Gillian Clarke, and appears in the poet's collection Letter from a Far Country.