BCD Special Report on
Historic Churches
17th annual edition
35
St Paul, Grangetown, Cardif (1888–90), above left, from the south-west, and above right, the nave arcade: the
pale pink areas visible in the exterior and the slender columns of the arcade are built of cast concrete blocks
containing crushed sandstone and brick as aggregate. (Photo, above right: Jonathan Taylor)
Caldey Island, showing part of the monastery, St Martin’s tower and the Post Ofce (mainly 1909–11)
– several chimney stacks have been removed. (All photos by the author unless otherwise stated)
Unusually, the arcades are of timber, but they
are carefully detailed to echo the trefoil-section
wagon roof which runs from end to end inside.
Te fnest of Coates Carter’s surviving
early churches, St Paul, Grangetown, Cardif
(1888–90, the chancel completed later),
develops these ideas further. Although the
intended tower was never built, the exterior
impresses through a combination of height,
austere massing, strong detailing and subtleties
like the delicate four-plane profle of the gables
on the rhythmically cross-gabled aisles and
on the stone spires of the turrets framing the
bold west front. Te tall interior is calm and
coherent, unifed by the splendid trefoil-section
roof of nave and chancel, and by the insistent
rhythm of tall, single-mullioned windows
which achieve resolution in the fve-light
east window. St Paul’s is also an early and
unexpected demonstration of Coates Carter’s
interest in concrete. Although the bulk of the
walling is of south Wales sandstone, and the
elaborate dressings are of Penkridge stone, some
substantial elements (including the arcades)
are of concrete cast in moulds, using sandstone
chippings and crushed brick as aggregate.
Te result is lovely, and has aged beautifully.
Te most restlessly inventive of all his
urban churches was also one of the smallest;
the former All Saints, Adamsdown, Cardif
(1899–1903), in secular use for many years. On a
long, narrow site, Coates Carter has ingeniously
ftted church, schoolroom and ancillary
accommodation on two levels. Te building
is clothed in a heady patchwork of stones
drawn from the south Wales valleys’ urban
vernacular: Pennant sandstone, Bath stone,
more brick-laced pink concrete, and bright
ribbons and splashes of local Radyr breccia.
At the west end, a slab-like vertical blade – part
bellcote, part spire – rises on the long axis of
the building, further emphasising its length
and slicing the west front dramatically in half.
and intelligence to mid-19th century Gothic
architecture in Wales, and their work was
widely admired by their contemporaries.
In 1885 Coates Carter was taken into a
partnership with Seddon that lasted until
1904. He seems to have controlled the
frm’s Cardif ofce and to have been largely
responsible for its work in Wales. In the series
of new churches which he designed between
the 1880s and the frst world war he tried
to establish an appropriate form for urban
church building in south Wales, gradually
refning and developing his creative language
in response to the vernacular architecture of
the region, and the brand of high-Anglicanism
which he and his clients favoured.
All of his early churches are in a tough
version of ‘modern Gothic’, partly inherited
from Seddon who he revered, and strongly
infuenced by aspects of the work of GF
Bodley. When Bodley and Garner’s church
of St German, Roath, was rising in the early
1880s in an unpretentious inner-city area
of Cardif, it must have seemed startlingly
radical and fresh to a young and imaginative
local church architect, and Coates Carter was
clearly intrigued by it. Ignoring the sumptuous
late-14th century surface of St German’s, he
eagerly adapted a number of Bodley’s formal
ideas and used them immediately in his frst
independently designed church, St Catherine,
Melincryddan, Neath (1888–91). Here are the
generously lofty proportions, the continuous
nave and chancel without clerestory, wide aisles
with repetitive fenestration, the sparing use of
extruded buttresses, emphasis on sculptural
external mass, and wide four-plane roof, all
imaginatively re-interpreted from St German’s.
St Catherine’s is executed in a palette of local
materials with eccentrically patterned dressings,
a repertory which Coates Carter would continue
to use for his major urban church buildings.
All Saints, Adamsdown, Cardif (1899–1903), its
west elevation dramatically sliced by the blade-like
bellcote