23248

 

II  

Designated  

28/04/2000  

28/04/2000  

Holy Cross Church  

 

Neath Port Talbot  

Port Talbot  

Port Talbot  

Tai Bach  

277548  

189515  

S  

Located in a large triangular graveyard bounded to the S by the M4.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

Chapel-of-ease by Edward Haycock in a pre-archaeological Gothic style erected in 1827. A board inside the church reports that it was built with a grant from the Society for promoting the Enlargement and Building of Churches and Chapels and was designed to seat 500 people. The board is signed by William Bruce Knight, minister, and the chapel wardens. The chapel was augmented in 1903 by G E Halliday and included the insertion of an ornate rood screen.  

Small cruciform-plan church in Gothic style. Nave, chancel, S and N transepts, W bellcote and W porch. Constructed of rubble stone under slate roofs with sandstone dressings. Detail includes diagonal buttresses with offsets to angles, kneelers and moulded copings to gables, large apex finials, and plinth. Tall shallow-pointed arched windows, double chamfered under hoodmoulds. These contain groups of transomed lancets, of timber, except for the E and W windows. Against the W end is a small gabled porch with entrance facing N. Tudor-arched chamfered entrance, now containing steel gates. Similar doorway to L into church with wooden door, and quarry tile floor. In the W gable end above the porch is a rose window underneath a hoodmould. The bellcote is gabled with a cross finial, and has an opening with lancet head. The S wall of the nave has 2 windows, each with 2 lancets. Similar 3-lancet window to gable end of S transept, blocked behind the tracery. The chancel is roughcast to the E gable end. Decorated E window with 5 trefoiled lights. Square side stack to E side of N transept. The windows to the N side are as the S side. Vestry door to W side of N transept with shallow pointed arch, chamfer and hoodmould with diagonal end bosses.  

The nave, chancel and transepts are undivided. Plaster groin vaults meet at the crossing with moulded cornices and wainscot panelling. One tie beam to nave, above which is an arcade of openwork lancets. The rose window to the W end is within a chamfered arched surround with splayed sill and contains stained glass. The ornate rood screen is 3-sided and projects into the crossing. Delicate openwork arches above low panelling, with cusped ogee heads. Friezes of trefoiled lancets above the arches, and top rail with reeding. Above the central entrance arch is a raised frieze of quatrefoils in a lattice surmounted by a large cross. A polygonal pulpit is built into the R end of the screen with blind cusped lancets. The vestry is in the N transept and is divided by a panelled screen with segmental headed doorway and has a dentilled frieze above. Panelled organ in S transept facing W. Octagonal font to W end on octagonal stem and square plinth. Small polygonal wood panelled pulpit to NE, on a wider octagonal stone base. Barley twist iron uprights with scrolls and leaves are mounted on the base and surround the pulpit. Altar rail of similar barley twist uprights with moulded wooden handrail. Pews with moulded bench ends to nave and crossing. Choir stalls with openwork lancet decoration. Quarry tile floor to nave with shields and heraldic emblems. Stained glass to E window; crucifixion in centre with resurrection and ascension in flanking lights. Dedicated to Ann Vintin, 1823-1905, of Tai Bach. Two bronze plaques mounted on N wall, to Hopkin Llewellyn Prichard (d. 1870), and to Margaret Jenkins (d. 1923). A grey marble tablet with arched head is in memory of Robert Lindsay of Glan Afon, Tai Back and his wife, whose remains are in a vault in St Mary's Church, Swansea.  

Listed as a well-preserved Gothic-style conformist chapel, which pre-dates the Gothic Revival of the Victorian period.