Church of St Margaret

Cadw's description

Location

At S end of Dyffryn Road set back from junction with New Road (A4059); Campell Terrace to rear.

History

Original building of apse, nave and W aisle 1860-2 designed by JP Seddon (Prichard and Seddon) architect of Llandaff and London, for J. Bruce Pryce, father of the first Lord Aberdare. Enlarged with E aisle and vestry 1883-4 by John Prichard; new chancel, vestry and tower added by E Bruce Vaughan, architect of Cardiff, in 1898.

Exterior

Complex High Victorian parish church orientated N and S in Early English style with some later C13 style detailing. Plan form of chancel, E organ chamber and transept, W vestries with tower in angle, aisled nave and NW porch. Snecked rubble masonry, pale freestone dressings, parapet gables with seatings for finials, slate roofs. Tall buttressed S front with niche containing St Margaret's statue to gable; wide 5-light window with cusped lancets in echelon, hoodmould, spandrel paterae, stepped sill band. Square SW tower with short pyramidal spire and weathervane behind crenellated parapet, Y-tracery bell-openings, polygonal stair turret. Lateral gables with plate tracery windows. Decorated tracery in finial surround to E side window. Twin lancets to aisles, NW porch with elaborately carved tympanum of Christ in a mandorla, angel supporters, crocketted arch over,roundel in apex, cusped panelling to double doors. Simple N front with large cusped oculus over door.

Interior

Interior has boarded and ribbed waggon roof to chancel, foliage paterae and angel supporters. Hood moulds, nook shafts, stiff-leaf capitals to windows and head stops, some portraits, to lateral arches. Arcaded end wall with 5-bay tabernacled reredos of 1904 designed by Bruce Vaughan, containing seated figures; triple arch sedilia. Tripartite responds with fillets to tall chancel arch. 6-bay nave without clerestory (wide bay second from E), round piers with foliage and scallop capitals, double-chamfered arches; unmoulded treatment to W bays, plain waggon roof, lean-to aisles. Elaborate furnishings include pulpit and lectern of 1897-8; stone font of 1905; organ of 1914 (remodelled 1952 to designs by Sir Percy Thomas). Fine stained glass includes chancel windows of 1900 by Robert J Newbery of London commemorating John Nixon principal colliery owner in the Cynon valley; other windows by Mary Lowndes 1917 (N transept), James Clarke 1916 (N aisle NE), AJ Davies of the Bromsgrove Guild 1930 (N aisle).

Reason for designation

Listed as a Victorian church with an interesting development history with contributions from leading South Wales architects in C19.