Church of St Augustine

Church of St Augustine

Parish church comprising a west tower, wide long nave with deep south porch, lower narrower chancel, and vestry with other extensions at the southeast. The building is constructed of stone rubble with ashlar dressings and Welsh slate roof with cruciform finials.

The embattled tower rises five storeys and is topped with triangular crocketed pinnacles on each corner. A string course with gargoyles runs below the belfry openings. On each face, the belfry openings are two-light pointed arches with Perpendicular tracery and pierced panels of cusped diapering. Below these are narrow rectangular chamfered lights serving the tower chambers on three levels. Clocks are set into the east and west faces. The ground floor features a Norman Transitional west doorway with roll mouldings and clustered shafts, fitted with a studded boarded door hung on full-width hinges.

The nave has a deep battered plinth and a shallow buttress at the southwest; remains of lime render survive. A southwest window contains two trefoil-headed lights. The south porch has a battered plinth and gable coping, with a pointed arched doorway featuring light mouldings, no capitals, and a heavy hoodmould. The porch interior is flagged with long benches on either side, and the ceiling is a three-bay arch-braced roof of 19th-century date with a lower tier of windbraces and billet moulding to the wallplate. A pointed-arched inner doorway leads through, fitted with a painted boarded door with wide hinges.

On the southeast of the nave is a larger three-light window with hoodmould. At the east end of the nave is an unusual two-tier window bay relating to the former roodloft, comprising three rectangular lights in the lower tier and similar lights above with cusped heads to the lights, plus a small staircase light at the extreme east. A medieval face corbel is visible at the eaves on the southeast. The south chancel has two large Tudor-arched three-light windows with Perpendicular tracery separated by a narrow moulded pointed-arched priests' doorway. The east window is large with three lights and Perpendicular-style tracery, probably a wholly 19th-century replacement. The northeast vestry complex comprises three separate blocks with an east entrance. The north nave has a range of three rectangular windows with cusped heads under hoodmoulds.

Internally, the walls are rendered. The nave floor is of flags and ledgers with deep reveals to the windows. A seven-bay boarded roof of bolted scissor trusses with billet-moulded wallplate spans the nave. Steps rise to the west door, which has the date 1829 designed in studs; the inner face of the south door is horizontal boarded. An octagonal 15th-century font stands in the nave. At the southeast end of the nave is a narrow door leading to the former roodloft steps with a narrow upper doorway now filled with stained glass; a piscina is adjacent to the lower window. The chancel arch is pointed with paired sunk quadrants and no capitals. The chancel roof spans four bays with wind braces.

High-quality woodwork includes a richly carved Perpendicular-style pulpit, rood screen, choir stalls, and extensive chancel and sanctuary panelling, some dated 1936. A polychrome reredos to the wooden altar is attributed to Ninian Comper. A war memorial to men of Rumney is set into the north nave wall. The nave and chancel contain simple 18th- and 19th-century wall monuments, including an unusual wooden monument of 1819 by Wilson of Llandaff to Thomas Heineken. A priests' board dated 1153 is preserved in the church. Most windows contain stained glass: the southeast chancel window is by Charles Kempe (early 20th century), the east window dates from around 1960, the southwest nave window is by Geoffrey Robinson (1976). The tower contains six bells bearing 18th-century inscriptions.