Church of St Seiriol

Church of St Seiriol

A parish church built in robust, boldly detailed Early English style. The building is constructed of rock-faced local granite with ashlar dressings, and features a banded slate roof with fishscale bands and terracotta cresting.

The exterior elevations are articulated by buttresses with offsets and continuous plinth and impost bands that wrap over the buttresses. The church comprises a nave with a lower south aisle, a north chapel, a vestry, a chancel, and a later tower positioned at the south-west corner and linked to the nave by a short porch or narthex bay.

The west end displays a doorway with shafts leading to a trefoiled archway, which cuts into a three-light plate-traceried window above. The narrower gable of the aisle alongside has a two-light plate-traceried window. The three-stage tower features clasping buttresses and a saddle-back roof, with paired lights in the lower stage to the west and a single light above. The bell chamber has a clock and paired foiled lights. The buttresses terminate in polygonal finials linked by an ashlar band with inset blind arcading, and a stair turret projects from the lower stage of the south wall. The east elevation has a door with shafts to a moulded arch and cast-iron gates. The south wall features plate-traceried windows, mostly of two lights, and a doorway towards the east end with a blind tympanum. A tall two-light window lights the east aisle. The chancel east window is particularly complex, comprising paired foiled plate-traceried lights within a larger arch with a hexfoil at its apex.

The north elevation is dominated by paired gables of the vestry and north chapel. The vestry has a two-light window with flat-headed lights set into a blind traceried arch, and a shouldered doorway alongside linked by a common impost band, with a chimney surmounting the gable. The chapel, separated from the vestry by a strongly expressed buttress, has paired complex plate-traceried windows divided by a central buttress with a blind wheel-head cross at the apex.

Internally, the nave displays exposed brickwork in yellow and red polychrome bands, with similar treatment to stepped arched window heads and the arches of the south arcade. The nave comprises six bays with circular stone columns of plain capitals, and stepped yellow and red brick arches. Roof trusses spring on long wall posts from corbels, with secondary rafters between the simple keeled principal trusses. The south aisle has scissor-braced rafters. The north chapel comprises two bays and is divided from the nave by a later timber screen.

The chancel arch is of ashlar and springs from corbels, with chevron detail to the outer arch and a plain stepped inner arch. A fine filigree timber rood screen surmounted by a cross is dated 1925. A timber pulpit dated 1908 features traceried panels flanking a central deep relief representing the Ascension. The chancel has a polychrome tiled floor and boarded ceiling with pierced decoration to the main truss. An organ chamber lies to the south and a vestry to the north.

A fine screen to the west of the organ chamber is said to have been made as a collaboration by members of the congregation and is panelled with various stylised traceried motifs and roundels reminiscent of furniture detail, dated 1902. An oak traceried communion rail with robust cusped traceried panels dates to 1907, as does the reredos depicting the Last Supper in deep relief, flanked by panelling. Side screens and other furnishings are also of 1907. A baptistery at the west end of the south aisle contains a font on a raised tiled platform featuring a wide shallow bowl with a heavily cut frieze of lilies.

The church contains a particularly fine series of stained glass windows. The west nave window dates to 1901 and commemorates Queen Victoria in a coronation theme. A medievalising east window is dated 1880, and the west window of the south aisle, in similar style, is dated 1883. Of the north chapel windows, one has a dedication date of 1885 and is unsigned but Pre-Raphaelite in style; the other, a nativity scene, is undated but signed by Mayer & Co.