Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels

Cadw's description

Location

Situated between the Castle and Laura Place.

History

Built 1886-90 by Nicholson of Hereford on land given by W E Powell of Nanteos. Replaced a church of 1833, a little to the W, by Edward Haycock of Shrewsbury.

Exterior

Victorian Decorated Gothic. Triple nave plan; chancel with N Lady Chapel and S Vestry/Organ Chamber; nave lengthened and W tower (originally designed to have a spire) with lean-to Baptisery added in 1906. Bull-nosed rubble masonry with freestone dressings, cill bands, plinths, gable parapets and crucifex finials; gabled and stepped buttresses; slate roofs with cresting. Mainly 3-light ca: 1300 windows with varied tracery; 4-light W window and 5-light E-window; some uncarved stops to hoodmoulds. 3-stage tower with crenellated parapet and polygonal SW stair turret; deeply splayed W entrance. N and S porches with ogee and finial headed arched entrances; nook shafts to inner doorways. Later style windows to vestry with octagonal chimney stack.

Interior of heavily tooled Bath stone with red sandstone banding. Timber roofs with crenellated wall plates and carved head corbels; the chancel roof also has bosses and is boarded in to the E bay, 5-bay nave with foilage capitals to quatrefoil piers; W-window lights an open gallery with petal pattern banded front. Classical marble monument by Chantrey of London at entrance to Baptistery with octagonal E E font and pyramidal cover on stepped base. Full width memorial screen by W D Caroe leads to Lady Chapel, Chancel and vestry/organ chamber; organ by Nicholson. 3-bay chancel, the western 2 bays arcaded with a statue of an angel at the junction of the hoodmoulds; N side openings have openwork screens. Ballflower ornamented sedilia and piscina and shouldered arch aumbry; Last Supper reredos with ogee canopies, by R W Boulton of Cheltenham. Gothic fittings, including hexagonal buttressed pulpit and Puginesque eagle lectern by Clarke of Hereford and designed by Nicholson. Most stained glass by Alfred O Hemming of London 1903; E window (1861) by Heaton, Butler and Bayne.

Truncated pier remains to W in churchyard.

Reason for designation

Group value.