Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin and St Stephen the Martyr, including forecourt wall and railings

Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin and St Stephen the Martyr

This church is built of rubble with freestone dressings and asbestos tile roofs. It presents a distinctive twin-towered front of four windows to Bute Street, though the main entrance is actually positioned at the west end beside the Vicarage. The towers are capped with pyramidal fishscale roofs, each featuring a grotesque carved corbel table and narrow louvered belfry openings, with pilaster buttresses supporting the structure. The front elevation is ornamented with a central rose window surrounded by a broadly scalloped band, with lower bands flanking the towers. The glazing employs diamond-patterned leadwork with colonettes and scalloped capitals. The broad central entrance is decorated with intersecting chevron and hatched ornament to the arch mouldings, a plain tympanum and trumeau, and twin doorways, with narrow arched recesses either side. Similar chevron ornament appears on the shouldered outer doorways. An aisle is set back to the left. A snecked rubble vestry range was added in 1907 to the right, its gable end crowned with a crucifix finial and featuring a three-light central window with granite columns and round-headed lights. A parapet runs along the right side with recessed panelling and small round-arched lights. The five-bay side elevations display plain round-arched fenestration with buttressing between bays and continuous impost bands. Lean-to aisles with similar detailing flank the nave. The west elevation is Westwerk-like in character, with square turrets and pinnacles, a central rose window to the gable with a bracketed band at its base, and two tiers below of three round-arched windows with sill bands and coloured glass. Octagonal stair turrets terminate the aisles at the ends.

The tripartite entrance on three storeys comprises a high central arch spanning twin main doorways with lower flanking doorways, all finished with cushion capitals.

The interior is arranged traditionally with the altar and apse at the east end, despite the towered front facing Bute Road. The present east end arrangements were designed by architect J D Sedding in 1884. The five-bay nave has a flat ceiling and round-headed clerestorey windows with plain glass. Arcades of round-headed arches rest on massive cylindrical columns with Norman-style capitals and bases, while hood moulds over the arches carry grotesque heads at intersection points. Simple trusses support the lean-to aisle roofs on stone corbels. The aisles formerly contained galleries (removed in 1883) and featured round-headed windows with stained glass and painted rubble walls. At the west end of the nave, a gallery over the entrance lobby houses an organ brought from Clifton Street Presbyterian Church. A fine wrought-iron screen, formerly the chancel screen of St Dyfrig's Church in Cardiff, is positioned between the westernmost columns of the nave. A wooden pulpit and choir stalls occupy the easternmost nave bay.

The chancel arch is flanked by paintings of St Winifred (left) and St Margaret (right), and features engaged Romanesque shafts and imposts with orders of the arch decorated with painted ornament. The elaborate apse beyond contains a decoratively painted ribbed five-bay vault. The apse wall is articulated with a Gothic arcade of tall shafts with stiff-leaf capitals. Painted medallions depicting Biblical scenes in 16th-century Italian style occupy the vault. The arcade is subdivided into five groups of three Gothic-arched niches; those flanking the altar contain life-sized statues of the twelve apostles on plinths, created by Searle of Exeter from 1884 onwards. The lowest zone features blind arcading in Romanesque style. Above the altar stands an elaborate free-standing altarpiece depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds in early 16th-century Venetian style, with a carved frame incorporating angels on end buttresses and symbols of the Eucharist and Christ's Passion, designed by P Westlake in 1884. A small chapel at the east end of the south aisle has a simple round-headed entrance arch.

The forecourt wall and railings are included in this listing.