Parish Church of St David

Cadw's description

Location

Prominently situated near Victoria Gardens Park by the junction of St David’s Street with Orchard Street.

History

1864-1866 by John Norton of London costing £6,400 on land donated by Howell Gwyn. French C13 Gothic style. Tall 5 bay nave with low aisles. N and S transepts; apsidal chancel and SE angle tower. Snecked bull nosed masonry, red sandstone bands, freestone dressings. Steep gabled slate roofs, over-sailing eaves, gable parapets, ironwork cross finials.

Exterior

Tall 4 light pointed W window, geometric tracery, hoodmould. Stepped buttresses incorporated into lean-to W porch with open cusped arcade. Cusped single light aisle windows, miniature arcade to parapet. Stepped buttresses, pinnacles; plinth. Gabled S porch, double pointed arch doorway, compound shafts. Mouchete bearing St David figure to foliate carved tympanum. Clasping buttresses, 2 light windows to sides. Pointed inner door. Tall clerestorey with 2 light plate tracery windows.

Gabled transepts, 3 light plate window, pierced disc sill band, stepped angle buttresses. Two one light windows to sides. Lean-to E vestry to N transept. Five stage, rectangular "Rhenish" tower. Irregular stressed quoins. Ashlar top storey on corbels; tripartite windows to central turret with corner bartizans linked by gabled clock faces. Pinnacled roofs, ironwork weathervanes. Banded pointed arches to plate traceried louvres of bellstage. Impost and sill bands. Three slit-like windows to second storey, tablet with lettering "VAUGHAN TOWER". Narrow lancet to first storey, banded relieving arch, ramped clasping buttress. Pointed S door.

Apsidal chancel, 9, 2 light plate tracery windows, trefoil sill band.

Interior

xuberant red brick interior with broad decorative bands of blue brick diaper work and freestone dressings. Alternating round and composite arcade piers with foliate capitals rise to pointed banded arches, continuous hoodmoulds. String course and impost band with nookshafts to clerestorey. Similar to W window. Arch braced roof, iron tension bars. Alternating trusses cusped with truncated colonettes on corbels. Tall banded arches on truncated double colonettes with corbels to transepts. Similar detail to chancel arch. Rear arches on colonettes to apse windows, deep cusping to roof. Pointed organ recess to N wall below stone medallion with Christian emblems.

Contemporary fittings including stone pulpit with marble colonettes, table font, pews and chair stalls. Glass by Clayton, Bell and Company to apse.

Reason for designation

Grade II* for exuberant interior with fittings, and for dominant tower.