Church of St Margaret

This is a cruciform church in the Geometrical style with a crossing tower, north-east Bute mausoleum, south-east vestry and south porch. The nave is short and the chancel stands higher than the nave. Built of coursed rock-faced stone with lighter freestone dressings and a slate roof behind coped gables on moulded kneelers, with corbelled rainwater goods. A string course runs above a slightly battered plinth. Windows have hood moulds, mostly with head stops.

Exterior

The gabled porch, attached to and set back from the south transept, has a doorway with a single order of Radyr stone nook shafts with foliage capitals, and an inner shaft continuous with the arch. The doorway has a hood mould with foliage stops. It contains double half-lit doors with diagonal leaded panes and similar glazing to the overlight. In the west side wall of the porch are two hooded cusped lights, while the nave has a cusped window to its left. The south transept has two 2-light windows with a buttress between. Above is a central sexfoil window with hood mould continuous with a string course. In the east wall of the transept is a single cusped window.

On the south side of the chancel is the sacristy and vestry, which has south-east angle buttresses and a lean-to roof behind a coped parapet with cusped trail to the cornice. A central boarded door with strap hinges has a shouldered lintel. A buttress stands to the right of the doorway. At the ends are single cusped windows, with a similar window in the east wall. A tall stone stack with two attached round shafts rises from the eaves of the chancel, which also has a corbel table with grotesque heads.

The chancel has a 5-light east window. The north-east mausoleum has gabled buttresses with trefoils, above which are sculpted flying angels, except to the abutment with the chancel. At the north-east angle is a broad pinnacle composed of clustered shafts. The mausoleum has a 3-light east window and a stepped sill band. Below the window is a memorial to Harriet Watson (died 1832) and descendants, composed of a gabled canopy with quatrefoil and flanking shields in relief over a blind segmental panel with a memorial inscription. A smaller 2-light window is in the gable, with moulded sill band. The buttressed north wall is 2-bay, with 3-light windows, a band below sill level, and a corbel table of grotesque heads supporting a parapet of blind quatrefoils with relief foliage.

The north transept projects slightly in front of the mausoleum. It has two 2-light windows and sexfoil window above, similar to the south transept. In its west wall is a 19th-century 3-light window, re-used and originally the west window of the earlier church. It has simple Perpendicular tracery with subsidiary reticulated tracery in the main tracery lights. The north wall of the nave has two cusped lights. The 4-light west window has ringed shafts, and above is a quatrefoil in the gable. The west doorway has a crocketed gabled hood breaking the sill line of the west window. The doorway has two orders of nook shafts, of which the outer is Radyr stone and the inner is more slender and filleted. Both have foliage capitals. The 2-centred arch has a hood mould with bestial stops. Double boarded doors have strap hinges incorporating an early 14th-century style scrollwork pattern over the upper portion of the door.

The simple crossing tower has a polygonal south-west turret with pyramidal stone roof below the belfry stage. The belfry stage has string courses above and below. Each face has two pointed openings with hood moulds and disc stops. They have Somerset-style traceried sound holes composed of quatrefoils set in a lozenge pattern. The embattled parapet is higher at the corners.

Interior

The interior has walls of cream-coloured Tymawr brick, with Bute red and Staffordshire blue brick employed in bands, patterning and relieving arches. The 2-bay nave and transepts have arched-brace roofs with a single tier of wind braces and pierced arcading above the cornice. The principals stand on short wall shafts with head corbels, except the north transept which has an angel corbel to the central principal on the north side. The nave west window has a shafted rere arch with hood mould and head stops. The transepts have north and south windows with linked hood moulds that form an impost band with blind cusped arch to the centre, while the sexfoil windows have a moulded sill band, shafted rere arch and hood mould.

The broad crossing has 2-centred arches to the nave and transepts with cylindrical responds to the transepts and on round corbels to the nave, all with foliage capitals. The piers are composed of banded polychrome masonry including white Bridgend stone, red Radyr stone, grey-green Forest of Dean stone and alabaster. The south-west pier has a 1914-18 war memorial inscription. The crossing retains squinches (for Prichard's intended octagonal tower) and a panelled wooden ceiling on corbels, the main ribs having nail-head moulding, the subsidiary ribs plainer mouldings. The 2-centred chancel arch forming the east side of the crossing is more elaborate than the other arches. It has shafts, the abaci of which support pairs of subsidiary shafts with waterleaf capitals to the inner orders, and head corbels to the outer order.

The chancel has a boarded, keeled wagon roof with thin ribs and bosses. The walls have richer polychrome brick patterning than the nave and crossing. The east window has a shafted rere arch with hood mould and embattled sill, above a band of relief foliage and ashlar alabaster wall (partly concealed by the later reredos). The step up to the chancel and three steps to the sanctuary incorporate Radyr stone treads, and the sanctuary has an encaustic-tile floor by Godwin of Lugwardine. The south side of the chancel has ashlar alabaster sedilia with cusped arches, gabled hoods with crocketed finials, and freestone shafts with moulded capitals and broad abaci. On the right side of the sedilia is a 2-bay arcade to the vestry and organ loft. A central octagonal pier has moulded capitals, two orders of chamfer, and hood mould with foliage stops. The outer responds are on pairs of shafts with head corbels, and have waterleaf capitals and square abaci. Below the organ pipes and behind the choir stalls is a subsidiary arcade of three cusped arches to each main bay, with castellated band above. The arcades have shafts, moulded capitals and broad abaci.

The Bute mausoleum has 2-bay arcades on the north side of the chancel and east side of the north transept. The transept arcade has an octagonal pier and polygonal responds, the chancel arcade has clustered shafts to the pier and responds, and both arcades have foliage capitals. The arcades are filled with a gilded wrought iron screen in a striking free Gothic style incorporating fleur-de-lys finials and 5-branch gasoliers. In the inner spandrel of the arcade to the transept is a mosaic of Christ in Glory. A 2-bay quadripartite vault has brick cells, the central ribs supported by ringed and filleted wall shafts with stiff-leaf capitals. The windows have richly detailed rere arches, including two orders of ringed shafts, with foliage moulding in the arches and hood moulds with head stops. Shields below the main lights are above the sills. The east window is flanked by empty canopied niches with tall pedestals.

The mausoleum has a mosaic floor, upon which are seven sarcophagi of polished red Peterhead granite. These commemorate Charlotte Jane Windsor, Marchioness of Bute (1746-1800), John Stuart, first Marquess of Bute (1744-1814), Frances Coutts, Dowager Marchioness of Bute (1773-1832), John, Lord Viscount Mountstuart (1767-94), Gertrude Amelia Stuart (died 1809), Lord Henry Stuart (1777-1809) and Elizabeth Stuart (1819-22). Memorial slabs on the north sides of the sarcophagi are the original sealing stones from the previous mausoleum.

The mausoleum retains a complete scheme of stained glass figures by W.F. Dixon, of 1886. They represent name saints of those deposited in the mausoleum. In the north wall the left-hand window has figures of St Elizabeth of Hungary, Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, and St Elizabeth of Portugal; the right-hand window has figures of SS Gertrude of Nivelles, John the Divine and Hemma; while in the east window are SS Charles Borromeo, John the Baptist and Francis of Assisi.

Furnishings

Other furnishings designed by Prichard include the font, which has a stepped plinth of Radyr stone, a round stem with detached alabaster shafts and foliage caps. The hexagonal bowl has inlaid alabaster crosses to the east and west faces. The rich polygonal alabaster pulpit stands on a freestone base, has thin shafts, inset panels with bosses, and foliage cornices with eagle book rest. The steps have a gilded wrought iron hand rail. The chancel is spanned by an alabaster dado with pierced roundels, on a freestone base. A wooden reredos of 1925 by Ninian Comper is in late medieval style with carvings by W.D. Gough and painting by H.A.B. Bernard-Smith. It comprises a central figure of the Risen Christ in a canopied niche with spirelet, flanked by apostles in canopied niches.

The transepts have memorial tablets in the west walls mainly reinstated from the earlier church. In the north transept is a sculpture of circa 1882 depicting St Margaret, placed there in 1980 and brought from St Margaret's House of Mercy in nearby Church Terrace. The choir stalls and communion rail are by A.D.R. Caroe, erected 1952-3. The firm of Caroe & Passmore designed a simple screen in the south aisle, installed in 1966. The nave and crossing retain original moulded pews.

Stained Glass

Original leaded diamond panes by Saunders & Co survive in the porch and the sacristy east window. The east window was re-glazed in 1952 following damage to the previous window in the 1939-45 war. It was designed by Carl Edwards for James Powell & Sons, and depicts the Ascension, with Christ in Majesty to the upper lights. The east window of the north transept depicts St Margaret of Antioch, was designed by L.C. Evetts, and was installed in 1969 to replace an earlier bomb-damaged window. The remaining windows are mostly by Burlison & Grylls. In the south aisle are St Michael and St Simon the Cyrenian of 1916, and ladies engaged in charitable work of 1896, beneath a sexfoil window depicting an angel bearing a shield with the monogram 'PHC', for Philip Henry Coward, donor of many of the windows. In the nave south window is the Risen Christ of 1906. The west window, installed in 1920 to commemorate Howard's 50th wedding anniversary, shows the Transfiguration above scenes from the early life of Christ. In the nave north windows are the Archangel Raphael of 1896 and St German, the latter designed in 1891 by G.F. Bodley, architect of the church of St German in Roath. In the north aisle the west window shows the Revelation to St John, of 1917. The north windows show the four Latin doctors, of 1917, and SS Ambrose and Jerome, of 1890 and also designed by Bodley, beneath a sexfoil window of an angel bearing a shield with the monogram 'IEC' (Isabella Eleanor Coward).