Full Report for Listed Buildings
The list description is not intended to be a complete inventory of what is listed: it is principally intended to aid identification. By law, the definition of a listed building includes the entire building (i) and any structure or object that is fixed to the said building and ancillary to it and (ii) any other structure or object that forms part of the land and has done so since before 1 July 1948, and was within the curtilage of the building, and ancillary to it, on the date on which said building was first included in the list, or on 1 January 1969, whichever was later.
Summary Description
Reference Number
13760
Building Number
Grade
II
Status
Designated
Date of Designation
19/05/1975
Date of Amendment
31/07/1997
Name of Property
Church of St James the Great
Address
Location
Unitary Authority
Cardiff
Community
Adamsdown
Town
Locality
Easting
319204
Northing
176829
Street Side
S
Location
On W corner of Newport Road and Glossop Road
Description
Broad Class
Religious, Ritual and Funerary
Period
History
1891-1894, replacing iron church. By Col E M Bruce Vaughan, architect, who lived in the parish, and later donated the stained glass in E window in memory of his sister (1906). The building shows influence of Bodley's nearby St German's.
Builder Messrs Burton & Co, Cardiff. Opened 15 June 1894. Some restoration following fire in 1925, by Willmot & Smith, architects, including tiling and marble steps to chancel, altar, organ, and War Memorial rood screen. The reredos (by J B L Tolhurst, and Christopher Webb) dates from 1925.
Exterior
Large church in late C13 Gothic style. Pink grey Swelldon stone, bathstone dressings, slate roofs. Tall NE porch tower with stone spire, tall clerestorey, and apsidal nave, low lean-to aisles, NW porch. Nave elevation has 10 clerestorey lancets in broader arches, broader aisle windows of 2-cusped lights with quatrefoil heads. Apsidal E end with lancets and shallow ambulatory (sculpted heads in roundels), transept-like organ chamber to S. NE tower has stone broach spire with lucarnes, stepped buttresses, louvred 2-light bell-stage windows with geometrical tracery, smaller windows below). Gothic archway to porch. NW porch has half-timbered gable with bargeboards, Gothic doorway with fleurons, simple boarded doors. Reliefs of censer-swinging angels to spandrels. W front of 3 bays with outer stone buttresses stepped and gabled flanking narrower pair of buttresses; 3 tall 2-light windows with Geometrical tracery (smaller 2-light window above to centre).
Interior
Bathstone faced. Arch-braced roof with cusped wind braces, and wall-shafts. Five bay nave, broad arches (2 clerestorey windows per bay), alternating round and octagonal shafts, stiff-leaf capitals, arcade hoodmoulds with rich floral stops. Marble steps to apsidal chancel, high wide chancel arch. Wooden Perpendicular style screen with rood, plain arches to narrow ambulatory. Reredos, carved gilt, painted with statues of The Lord, St James, John the Baptist and Welsh Saints.
Chancel lancets with stained glass of The Lord and Welsh Saints. Very fine octagonal polychrome pulpit (1892) with figures of famous preachers.
Reason for designation
Listed as "the masterpiece of E M Bruce Vaughan", whose finely composed tower and spire is a key feature on the Newport Road approach to the city centre.
Group value with Cardiff Royal Infirmary
Cadw : Full Report for Listed Buildings [ Records 1 of 1 ]
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