Church of St Mary Risca

Church of St Mary, Risca

This is a Gothic Revival church comprising a tall nave, lower chancel, north and south aisles, a south porch and a southeast tower. It is built of tooled stone and ashlar with a Welsh slate roof featuring ashlar coping, decorative kneelers and ballflower ornament at the eaves.

The west front displays a very steep gable with a large five-light window with curvilinear tracery and face stops to the hood mould. A sillband extends at right angles to join the flanking buttresses which have offsets. The central steeply gabled west doorway has a moulded pointed arched entrance with hood mould and boarded doors with very decorative hinges, set within a very deep stone-tiled battered plinth. To each side are the aisles with roofs at a shallower pitch, lit by two-light windows with cusped tracery and fitted with angle buttresses.

The south porch is also steeply gabled, reached by four steps, and is similarly detailed with a pointed arch, hood mould, stops and doors. It features moulded kneelers, a cruciform finial, side buttresses with deep offsets and paired side windows. On the south side of the nave are paired two-light windows with trefoil tracery and foliage with face stops, with ventilators below. Against the wall at the southwest is an unusual marble monument in reliquary style, constructed of red and black marble to the memory of Evan Cross (died 1885), his wife and many of their children, surrounded by an unusual mastiff-collar type iron railing with a deep moulded kerb curving from the southwest of the church to the south wall of the porch.

The tall bell tower with spire is positioned at the southeast, marking the junction of the nave and chancel. The tower comprises three storeys with substantial angle buttresses with offsets and thick stepped bases. The ground floor features a two-light window with geometric tracery and deep splays with face stops to the hood mould, and a narrow tower chamber light to the first floor. Above this is a deep tiled offset with angel figures at each corner in gargoyle position though not functioning as water spouts. Above this is the narrower ringing chamber with a two-light louvred opening with geometric tracery. The broached spire has four steeply gabled louvred openings above the broach, which is supported by beast corbels and surmounted by a weathercock. A lean-to priests' door is situated at the southeast. The east end has a four-light chancel window similar to the west window with a similar stepped string course, and narrow sanctuary windows. A flat roofed single storey vestry wing is attached at the northeast. The north aisle is lit by a three-light east window with geometric tracery and three pairs of windows with cusped tracery, separated by buttresses with offsets.

The lofty interior is white painted. The nave is relatively short with three bay pointed-arched moulded arcades to the north and south, with piers alternating between octagonal and round. The roof is arch-braced with canopywork in the apex on the collar. The six roof trusses are supported by large corbels which extend down into the spandrels of the arcade. The aisles also have large face corbels at wallplate level. A deeply carved stone and alabaster pulpit of 1887, a Jubilee commemoration of the parish clergy, is positioned at the northeast. A very tall moulded pointed chancel arch with corbels supporting similar capitals, hood mould and face stops divides the nave from the chancel. The chancel also features a decorative roof in four bays with a pierced wheel motif in the truss apex. The east end is fitted with wooden panelling and a twentieth-century altar with a carved stone reredos against the east window supporting five painted figures. To either side are tall painted stone and marble gilded Commandment tablets with very decorative Gothic canopies. Eighteenth-century monuments from the former church are retained, together with a brass altar rail, also a Jubilee addition. The stained glass is twentieth-century.