11449

 

II  

Designated  

11/07/1951  

13/01/1988  

St Tydfil's Church  

 

Merthyr Tydfil  

Town  

 

 

304951  

205810  

 

Situated in an enclosed churchyard at S end of High Street close to roundabout on A470 road.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

On the site of the martyrdom of St Tydfil in fifth century AD. Entire church rebuilt 1895-1901 to designs by J L Pearson, architect of London; C18 lower storeys of tower retained. Church closed for worship 1968.  

Burgundian Romanesque style. Plan of apsidal chancel, aisled nave (without clerestory), transept chapels, tall W tower, S porch, NE vestries and priest’s room. Pale freestone dressings, bull-nosed facings, slate roofs, crucifix finials. Arcaded corbel-table, chevron window heads, roll-moulded sill band. Oculi to transept gables (S traceried), linked hoodmoulds to nave. Gabled S porch with billet cornice, Transitional-style blind arcading, foliage band over arch with nook shafts; boarded doors to shouldered inner opening under blind tympanum. Plain parapet over clock faces and linked bell-openings to 4-stage unbuttressed W tower, circled stair turret in NW angle. Banded quoins, impost bands, tall blind arches survive from Georgian lower stages.  

Fine colourwashed interior with groin vaulted chancel and flanking chapels; twin roll-moulded transverse arches, pilaster responds and varied capitals with crockets, waterleaf and acanthus. 4-bay nave with diaphragm arches to flat ceiling, pointed transverse arches to aisles with groin vaults as before. Furnishings include a medieval octagonal font (under tower); Pearson’s round, panelled pulpit; pelican lectern; good neo-classical wall monuments (from earlier church). Pair of Early Christian carved stones against N wall, one being the famous ring-cross, incised pillar stone of ARTBEU; the other the ANNICIUS stone.