Christ Church (Garrison Church of Swansea)

Christ Church, also known as the Garrison Church of Swansea, is a church oriented north-south, featuring a plan that includes a chancel, overlapping aisles with a Lady Chapel and vestry block, an organ chamber, and a porch, all designed in a mid-13th century Gothic style.

The south front has three gables, with a bellcote at the flat center gable that includes a quatrefoil oculus. Below this, there is a 3-light Geometric window, while the lower outer gables feature 2-light windows. The exterior is constructed with snecked rubble facings and pale sandstone dressings, topped with slate roofs that have ridge cresting. The gable parapets are adorned with crucifix finials, and the southwest porch has a cat-slide roof. The vestry block has twin gables and tall twin stacks over the aisle roof. The windows display plain 2-light Geometric tracery, and there are rainwater heads dated 1910.

Inside the chancel, the ceiling features ribbed wagon roofs, supported by angel corbels on arched braces, with cresting and paterae on the wall plates. The side arches are moulded and supported by foliage corbels with head stops. A tall, pointed timber chancel arch rests on wide foliage corbels and features Evangelist stops. The nave has four bays with quatrefoil piers and crocket capitals, and the trussed nave roofs are supported by scissor braces. There are cusped sedilia with a piscina, an intricate Perpendicular rood-screen with a chained crucifix, and a Caen stone reredos in the south chapel, which was formerly part of the altar in Bishop Gore’s Grammar School Chapel. The chancel window glass was created by W H Constable of Cambridge in 1879, while the south window glass was made by C E Kempe in 1897, along with other windows by Kempe and Powell.