Roman Catholic Church of St Mary

Roman Catholic Church of St Mary

This Roman Catholic church was built in 1906 by architect Andrew Prentice and Fr. Eugene Roulin in a broadly Lombard Italianate style. (An attached church hall added in 2002 is not included in the listing.)

The building is constructed of very thinly jointed red Ruabon brick incorporating white rendered panels, with cast concrete windows and a modern buff tiled roof.

The plan comprises a nave without aisles, an eastern chancel, a western chapel, a north porch, and a campanile. A large added transept extends from the south side of the chancel.

The nave is five bays long. The western bay on the north side is occupied by the campanile and adjacent porch. The nave windows are round arched with cills, imposts and keystones formed from flat tiles. The window tracery is cast concrete in the form of Middle Eastern sun screens, said to have been derived from an early Christian mosaic from the 4th century. The nave is supported by stout buttresses embellished with panels, some bearing monograms and symbols. The nave's eastern gable is raised and coped, surmounted by a simple cross.

The campanile is Italianate and embellished with panels bearing symbols. It has an open belfry stage with a pyramidal roof capped by a pineapple finial.

The chancel is square ended and of a single bay. The east wall is embellished with a brick and render diaper pattern and has a mosaic roundel at its centre flanked by small round arched windows without tracery. The north wall has a Lombard style paired window, comprising two round arched windows sharing a central stone pillar.

The west chapel is in the form of a canted bay with a projecting double-pitched roof. Its west window matches those of the nave, being flanked on the canted sides by windows similar to those of the eastern chancel.

The south transept is of well matched materials and extends four bays southwards from the chancel. The southern bay has a shallow open porch; the other bays have Lombard style paired windows.

Internally, the nave is open to the roof, which is supported by king post trusses displaying an elaborate painted scheme. The western bay has a raised gallery accessed from the west chapel, with an ornate oak balcony-front. Part-glazed oak screens below are a later addition. The side walls are oak panelled to window cill height, incorporating resin roundels forming the Stations of the Cross. The sacristy door is also oak but incorporates gilt relief decoration. Above the panelling, the walls are plastered and embellished with an elaborate painted scheme depicting figurative and symbolic representations of saints and other early Christian motifs. The north wall incorporates two large painted relief panels. Windows have plain glazing, with roof windows supplementing interior light.

The chancel arch is a plain round arch included in the decorative scheme, though this has been simplified. The chancel has been reordered and the decorative scheme of the east wall painted over. Its windows contain figurative stained glass.

The transept is more simply treated but has a Jacobean style plaster ceiling. Its windows are plain glazed.

The west chapel, known as the Martyrs' Shrine, has figurative stained glass to the two flanking windows. At its centre stands the church's original altar set beneath the front half of the ciborium.