87906

 

II  

Interim Protection  

 

 

Catholic Church of St Illtyd  

 

Denbighshire  

Rhuddlan  

Rhuddlan  

 

302293  

378605  

 

Set amongst housing on the N side of Rhuddlan, accessed from Maes Onnen and Vicarage Lane.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

Modern  

Catholic church of 1975-76 by the architectural practice the Bowen Dann Davies Partnership (BDDP). The contractor was Anwyl Construction. Construction cost was £48,000. The Catholic congregation of Rhuddlan had rented a former stable for Mass for many years, but in 1960 the Bishop of Menevia started a fundraising campaign for a permanent church. The funds were in place by 1975 and land purchased in the north of the town where a large new housing estate was also being built. The parish priest, Fr Murphy, briefed the architects for a church that could accommodate 250 worshippers during the summer tourism season but would have far fewer in the winter. The Bowen brothers of Colwyn Bay had built their practice on mock Tudor and Arts and Crafts influenced private houses in the interwar period and from 1950 onwards Stewart Powell Bowen had built up the practice with larger public housing schemes. He also embraced architectural Modernism with notable works such as the houses at Pen y Bryn Road Colwyn Bay (see Listed Building 87759). The Bowen Dann Davies Partnership (BDDP) formed in 1970 with Stewart Bowen’s long-time protégé William Davies made a partner and joined by Frank Dann, formerly of PM Padmore’s practice in Llanfairfechan. The partners’ interests in North Wales vernacular styles and materials, always latent in the work, becoming more overt and critically celebrated in the 1970s. A 1982 in-house design guide for the practice stated: “The quality of our landscape and our relatively severe climate deserve architectural solutions which will continue to provide valid and recognisable regional form … while accepting economical modern materials.” Rhuddlan was the third of three remarkable Catholic churches produced by Stewart Bowen and the Bowen Dann Davies Partnership (BDDP) between 1964 and 1976, an era of bold experiments in ecclesiastical architecture following the Second Vatican Council. The first was Our Lady of Lourdes at Benllech (1964-5, see Listed Building 87908) by Bowen, for which Bill Davies contributed all the architectural work. Christ the King in Towyn followed in 1973-4 (see Listed Building 87903) and finally St Illtyd’s Rhuddlan. These three churches are very different in appearance, but all share a set of architectural ideas marrying BDDP’s critical regionalism with the post-war Liturgical Movement in Church design. Firstly, they use modular spaces, expressed externally, so that the church can easily adapt to the wide fluctuations in size of congregation produced by North Wales’ seasonal tourist industry. Secondly, they seek harmony with their surrounding landscape and townscape through low lying massing and choice of sympathetic materials. Finally, they are notable for the use of asymmetrical roofscapes harnessing natural light to emphasise the altar internally. St Illtyd’s Rhuddlan was awarded a RIBA commendation in 1978.  

This description uses actual rather than liturgical directions except where noted. Long and low building, scaled to fit with the surrounding housing. Concrete block construction with harled and painted render under low swooping asbestos cement slate roof with deeply overhanging eaves. Dark-stained timber windows in long bands on chamfered concrete block sills with emphasised vertical divisions. Cement blocks left unrendered at plinth level. Three principal blocks – church (with articulated sanctuary and nave), hall and sacristy – organised asymmetrically with the church at the widest end of the range to the north. From here, the building successively steps down in height, and steps in on plan on the eastern side, so that each block is clearly articulated. Main glazed entrance is off centre to north on the long continuous western elevation, incorporated into a continuous clerestory ribbon, under the saw tooth roofline descending from liturgical east to west. Two glazed rooflights at the corners of this western roofline mark the steps down from nave to hall and hall to sacristy. At the north end (the liturgical east), the roofline thrusts up to a clerestory over the sanctuary, glazed on its eastern face, with simple steel cross on north face. Sanctuary also lit from tall and narrow glazed panels at ground level on either side where the building steps out to the north. Side doorway and banded windows beneath the eaves wrapping around the NE angle where the main body of the church steps out beyond the sanctuary. Hall stepped down from church and stepped in on plan to E: doorway and banded windows wrapping the SE angle as before. Similar detail to sacristy, stepped down again with wraparound glazed SE corner before final step in with east facing side entrance and blind boiler room block chamfered on SE side. Here the roof sweeps outward with its timber eaves at the extreme SW resting on a boundary wall which rises to meet it in the same materials as the church walls, with timber gate.  

Simple interior of white painted walls and exposed natural materials, including parquet floor (carpeted to nave and sanctuary) and boarded beams and ceilings, which are asymmetrical and with forms that vary between church and hall. Altar and font on raised platform, the timber font in the form of an inverted ziggurat with a green plinth and slate top. Tabernacle decorated with the symbols of the Eucharist. Original benches and other furnishings, all part of the original design. No structural distinction between church and hall, enabling hall space to serve as extension to church. Altar and font on raised platforms divided by an intermediary mid-level zigzag step. Altar, font and lectern each take the form of an inverted timber ziggurat on a block plinth, as does a celebrants’ bench extruded from sanctuary wall behind the lectern. Dark slate tops to altar and font, the latter a nonorthogonal shape with hexagonal timber lid. Off centre tabernacle on extruded shelf decorated with chalice, wheat and fish. Original benches and other furnishings, all part of the original design, with timber Stations of the Cross to either side of nave. Sanctuary lit by high east facing clerestory to channel morning light onto altar, to the right of which is a shadier low-ceilinged alcove containing the baptistry and organ. To rear of hall is a confessional with confessor’s entrance on the hall side and the priest’s entrance from the large sacristy room beyond, reached by an axial corridor. On the west side of this corridor is a kitchen with servery hatch to hall, toilets and boiler room.  

Included for its special interest as a fine example of a post-Vatican 2 Catholic church, and of the work of the Bowen Dann Davies Partnership, one of the most accomplished architectural partnerships in Wales in the post-war period. The building is an assured exemplar of the modernist vernacular idiom with which the partnership is particularly associated, allied to the reforming ideas of the Liturgical Movement and the Second Vatican Council. The church survives relatively little altered. This structure has been afforded Interim Protection under the Planning (Listed Building and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. It is an offence to damage this structure and you may be prosecuted. To find out more about Interim Protection, please visit the statutory notices page on the Cadw website. For further information about this structure, or to report any damage please contact Cadw.