17285

 

II  

Designated  

12/09/1996  

29/10/2020  

Church of St Paul  

 

Powys  

Kerry  

Newtown  

Dolfor  

310631  

287084  

E  

Located on sloping ground of a narrow valley, at a sharp bend of the road. The small church is approached from gates through an avenue of trees, installed and planted to commemorate the 1887 Golden Jubilee.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

The church at Dolfor was built in 1851 as a chapelry of Kerry, by T.G. Newnham, for the Rev. G.A. Cheese at a cost of £1,000, to serve this distantly outlying part of the parish. A scale model of a portion of the roof was displayed at The Great Exhibition of 1851, in order to showcase the innovative use of terracotta ribs.  

A Gothic style church built of buff-grey bricks with terracotta quoins and dressings, under a steeply pitched, renewed slate roof on moulded eaves. The church consists of a 3-bay nave with angle buttresses, corbelled W bellcote, three-sided E apse, S porch, organ chamber set at right angles on N and corrugated-iron vestry added to NW. The S door of the porch is inset below a hollow-chamfered, slightly ogee arch formed with a ceramic hood mould and bold floriated terminals. Inside the porch is a quarry tile floor and steps up to the S door, which has a finely moulded arch and tympanum with bar tracery. Two-light windows have cusped quatrefoil vesica heads, all with similar hood moulds. The apse windows are similar, set high, and linked, each gabled, the roof hips coped. A deeply hooded sanctus bell hood is set above. The W window is of 4 lights, tightly curvilinear, below an idiosyncratic bellcote with a heavily detailed roundel and a single bell.  

The 7-bay hammerbeam roof in the nave has terracotta ribs, as showcased at the Great Exhibition, disguised as arched braces by painting them brown to resemble timber, with posts to wall corbels. Detached cross-bracing rises from the hammerbeams to criss-cross the boarded ceiling. Two steps to the Chancel were added later. The chancel arch, vault and rere-arches are all painted, but are probably also of terracotta, given its consistent use elsewhere in the building. The chancel arch has naturalistic corbels, and a lierne vault with bosses in the apse. There are rere-arches to window embrasures. The floor is tiled in the nave. Stained glass to commemorate Victoria’s golden jubilee in 1887 depicts SS John and Paul in the E window, and David and Esther in a S window. Fittings include an octagonal font at the W end, 1914-18 war memorial plaque in the N wall, and the organ installed in 1884.  

Included as a well designed and individualistic small church, a relatively rare example of a Gothic-style church built in the C19 before the influence of the ecclesiologists came to dominate church architecture. The church is also of special interest for the consistent and innovative use of terracotta detailing, particularly in the hammerbeam roof.