The mansion and ruined church of Slebech occupy the site of a Commandery of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who early in the twelfth century established a small community here, to collect funds for the purposes of that ancient fraternity. The creation of this Commandery appears to have been an event of considerable importance; and we find such names as Maurice de Prendergast, the invader of Ireland, and Fitzgerald, the notorious Bishop of St. Davids, enrolled amongst its earliest benefactors. Dedicated to St. John the Baptist, the old ruined church of the Knights-Templars stands in a low, sheltered situation, half surrounded by the waters of the Cleddau; just one of those secluded spots that seem to have been congenial to the mediæval temperament. The main walls and arches of the fabric still remain fairly intact, and, like the western tower, are smothered in masses of rank, untended ivy. A doorway in the northern face of the tower gives access, beneath a low-pitched, Gothic archway, to the interior of the church. This archway is surmounted by a decayed stone escutcheon, charged with certain armorial bearings which Fenton deciphered as 'arms quarterly, first and fourth a fesse dauncette, second and third a lion rampant.' A similar shield, at the apex of an upper window, displays the simple cross of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. The dismantled interior, carpeted with rank herbage and vaulted with the dome of heaven, looks picturesque in its decay. From the spot whence our sketch was taken, the old font is seen near at hand, overtopped by an arch giving access to a pretty side-chapel with traceried window, and a small piscina formed in the flank of the pillar. Through the open archway upon the right we gain a glimpse of the roofless, desecrated chancel. When Fenton was here, about the beginning of the present century, the latter was still covered with its wooden ceiling, fashioned into square compartments and ornamented at the crossings of the beams with floreated enrichments, conspicuous amidst which appeared the arms of the Barlow family. At that time the Barlow monument occupied a prominent position against the south wall of the chancel, which may be easily identified by the ragged stonework whence the structure has been torn away. This act of vandalism is much to be deplored, for the monument appears to have been an unusually handsome one, the effigies of Barlow and his lady reposing beneath a sumptuous canopy, surmounted by a blank escutcheon.