Church of Saint Matthew

This Anglican parish church is built of squared, rock-faced Pennant rubble stone from Howel Gwyn's quarries, with Bath stone dressings and slate roofs incorporating bands of fishscale slating. The nave roof retains its original pale grey slates, while the other roofs have been renewed. The church features coped gables with stone cross finials, ashlar quoins, a battered plinth, and a sill-course below the windows. Designed in the Early Decorated style, it has tall narrow lancet windows to the nave and traceried windows to the chancel and west end. Ashlar eaves cornices are corbelled to the chancel. Doors are generally pointed and roll-moulded. The plan comprises a southwest porch tower, nave, chancel with north vestry and organ chamber.

Tower

The tower has two tall stages. It rises from a high plinth with moulded top and a moulded string-course continued from the hoodmould of the pointed south door. This door has double-chamfered and stopped sides, a roll-moulded head, and pierced timber gates. Within the porch, the south doorway sits in a deep pointed reveal with stencil decoration; both arches are roll-moulded. The doors have large scroll hinges. A Caernarfon arched door in the northeast corner gives access to the tower stair. The porch has a high panelled ceiling. Above the outside south entry, a statue of St Matthew stands on a column linked to the hoodmould apex, sheltered under a gabled canopy. Above this, each face of the tower has a pair of small plain rectangular lights set in ashlar pointed surrounds. The south side has a clock in a square ashlar surround. The bell-stage features a large ashlar triple arcade with column shafts and a triple hoodmould framing tall narrow louvred bell openings. The ashlar of the bell-stage is recessed with corbelling above, a Gothic cornice with gargoyles at the angles, and a Gothic pierced parapet. The tower's east side has a stair tower to the right with a chamfered top below bell-stage level. Both east and west sides have small lancets to the ground floor.

Nave

The nave's south side has one window to the left of the tower and two two-light windows (paired lancets) to the right. The west end has a round-arched three-light window with a large octofoil in the head, short columns as radiating bars, and an arched hoodmould continued as a string course on each side. An added lean-to of 1900 has an ashlar parapet and a small central gable over a pointed two-light window. Its south end has paired lancets with heads stepped to follow the parapet slope, and the north end has a pointed door. The nave's north side has tall lancets: a pair to the right and three singles.

Chancel

The chancel has a more ornate corbelled cornice at the eaves, a moulded plinth, and traceried two-light windows with quatrefoils in the heads, stone voussoirs, and a sill course. There are two windows on the south side and one on the north. The south side has a central pointed door with the sill course carried over as a hoodmould, approached by five steps with low ashlar parapets. The east end has a sill course stepped up under a large three-light traceried window with column-shafts to the mullions and double shafts to the jambs, keel and roll mouldings, and a large sexfoil in the head. The hoodmould has carved head stops.

The north vestry of 1884–5 is large, with a gabled west porch with pointed door and an added lean-to boiler room to the right. The north end has a roundel with a quatrefoil over two lancets; the east side has paired cusped lancets.

Interior

The interior is a fine example of High Victorian design with stencil decoration to plastered walls and roofs. The nave roof is panelled in seven cants, divided by ribs into four bays. The ribs are chamfered and painted with florets, carried down on wall-posts to Gothic columns with carved leaf capitals on round bases set on leaf corbels. A chamfered cornice with zigzag moulding runs below a narrow band of vertical panels, each with stencilled roundels containing quatrefoils. Large panels to the five canted sides have large quatrefoils and roundels in the corners. Bands of balls decorate the panel borders. The nave floor has quarry tiles to the aisle in three colours and ornate cast-iron grilles over heating pipes. The nave walls have painted decoration in brown on cream, with a brown dado, a band of scroll above, and patterning in the window reveals and around window heads. A band of text at mid-height with stylised stencilled Gothic shafts down to dado level reads: "My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord... mine eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually." At the west end is the text: "He ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the father almighty." The nave has segmental pointed reveals to the south door and windows.

The pointed chancel arch has two roll moulds; the inner one rests on a corbelled column shaft on a round plinth carried on a shorter plainer column shaft on a leaf corbel. Eroded painted text above (the Magnificat) and painted scroll on the arch soffit remain visible. There are steps at the chancel arch, after the stalls, and at the sanctuary rails. The chancel roof has painted boarding between three transverse arches of doubled ribs separated by bands of pierced trefoils. The ribs are painted gold and red. Four sections of the roof each have six painted quatrefoiled squares with censing angels on pale blue grounds. The ribs rest on large leaf corbels with a stencilled frieze between. The chancel walls are stencilled with scattered stylised flowers over a dado of Gothic arcading with diaper pattern infill. The east wall has flowers and also two large crosses in roundels. The east window is ornate, with column shafting to both the tracery and sides, and a hoodmould with painted carved heads.

An ornate reredos is flanked by painted carved Gothic arcading in three bays. This arcading has cusping, marble shafts, and linked triangular hoodmoulds. Stencil painting includes fine roundels, symbols of the Evangelists, the Lamb of God, and the pelican, on a diaper pattern ground, with a band of scroll above and cross roundels in the heads. Between the hoodmoulds are IHS symbols. There is much gilding. The ornate reredos itself is ashlar on a marble shelf, of three bays with columns between. The shafts are of dark veined marble with carved gilded capitals; the gables have apex marble spheres, gilded crockets, and three cusped panels with carved mouldings and relief carvings of the Last Supper, Crucifixion, and Agony in the Garden. Panelled piers between the gables have crocketted finials. The south side has a cusped pointed piscina and seat in the reveal of the window, with the reveals cut back to square with a trefoil head. The north side has a large chamfered segmental-pointed opening for the organ.

The added west lean-to of 1900 is brick-lined, even to the west end of the main church, which suggests it was intended from the beginning. It has a Caernarfon arch to the door from the nave and double diagonally-boarded doors. The large north vestry and organ-chamber has a six-sided boarded panelled roof, panelled dado, and an ornate metal radiator grille on the east side with a marble top.

Fittings

The font is of grey Caen stone, with a square, slightly tapered large bowl featuring a band of ballflower decoration below the rim and large quatrefoil roundels on each side. It stands on four marble-shafted columns around a central large ashlar octagonal shaft. The font has an exceptional cover: a wooden square lid beneath a polished brass four-sided pierced turret with sloping sides pierced with Gothic leaf patterns, carried on a chain from an ornate scrolled wrought-iron wall bracket.

The ornate Caen stone pulpit has a Gothic three-sided front with cusped-pointed panels, column-shafted, and thin column shafts at the angles. The centre panel has a dark veined marble applied cross; the right panel has IHS in a vesica. It has a Gothic leaf cornice, a moulded base, and stands on four columns with red granite shafts. Stone steps lead up with a timber Gothic traceried rail linked to a matching rail to the chancel. The chancel rail dates from 1923–4 to J. Moore-Gwyn, but the pulpit is from the 1870s.

The sanctuary rails have six Gothic wrought iron standards and a moulded timber rail with ballflower ornament. There is a small brass eagle lectern on a fine High Victorian cast-iron tripod base. The later 19th-century organ is by Vowles of Bristol, with painted pipes and Gothic pine casing, renovated in 1962. Pitch-pine stalls have fleur-de-lys finials. The pews are also pitch-pine. On a table are two fine marble busts removed from Dyffryn: one of Howel Gwyn made at Rome in 1835 by R.J. Wyatt, and the other of Mrs Gwyn made in 1862 by Alfred Gatley. Tower bells and clock by Dent & Son of London were installed in 1875.

Stained Glass

The fine three-light west window of 1900 in late Gothic style is by Clayton & Bell, given to H. Gwyn. The west narthex two-light is probably of 1900 (it was under repair at the time of survey). The nave south single light shows the Baptism, given by H. Gwyn around 1880; two two-light windows depict the four Evangelists. The nave north first window is to J.E. Moore-Gwyn (died 1923) and his wife (died 1934), a two-light with two conventional figures in pale colours. The second window of 1900 to H. Gwyn is similar to the west window in delicate late Gothic, with three scenes of good works. The third window shows St Cecilia, to S. Moore (died 1889), and the fourth window shows St John the Baptist, to H. Gwyn; both are similar late 19th century and similar to the chancel north two-light to Howel Gwyn (died 1888), which is faded, with a portrait of H. Gwyn. The south two-light, also faded, shows "Blessed are Pure in Heart," to Rev. J. Moore (died 1876). The adjoining window to Howel Gwyn, with a portrait of him as the Good Samaritan, is not faded and may be by the same firm, possibly Clayton & Bell like the west window. The fine east three-light window of circa 1871, given by Howel Gwyn, depicts the Angel at the Tomb, the Resurrection, and Jesus with St Mary Magdalen, with three small scenes below. In the large sexfoil above is Christ the King and angels. This is possibly by Clayton & Bell.