Catholic Church of St Illtyd

Simple interior of white painted walls and exposed natural materials, including parquet floor (carpeted to nave and sanctuary) and boarded beams and ceilings, which are asymmetrical and with forms that vary between church and hall. Altar and font on raised platform, the timber font in the form of an inverted ziggurat with a green plinth and slate top. Tabernacle decorated with the symbols of the Eucharist. Original benches and other furnishings, all part of the original design. No structural distinction between church and hall, enabling hall space to serve as extension to church.

Altar and font on raised platforms divided by an intermediary mid-level zigzag step. Altar, font and lectern each take the form of an inverted timber ziggurat on a block plinth, as does a celebrants’ bench extruded from sanctuary wall behind the lectern. Dark slate tops to altar and font, the latter a nonorthogonal shape with hexagonal timber lid. Off centre tabernacle on extruded shelf decorated with chalice, wheat and fish. Original benches and other furnishings, all part of the original design, with timber Stations of the Cross to either side of nave. Sanctuary lit by high east facing clerestory to channel morning light onto altar, to the right of which is a shadier low-ceilinged alcove containing the baptistry and organ.

To rear of hall is a confessional with confessor’s entrance on the hall side and the priest’s entrance from the large sacristy room beyond, reached by an axial corridor. On the west side of this corridor is a kitchen with servery hatch to hall, toilets and boiler room.

This description uses actual rather than liturgical directions except where noted. Long and low building, scaled to fit with the surrounding housing. Concrete block construction with harled and painted render under low swooping asbestos cement slate roof with deeply overhanging eaves. Dark-stained timber windows in long bands on chamfered concrete block sills with emphasised vertical divisions. Cement blocks left unrendered at plinth level. Three principal blocks – church (with articulated sanctuary and nave), hall and sacristy – organised asymmetrically with the church at the widest end of the range to the north. From here, the building successively steps down in height, and steps in on plan on the eastern side, so that each block is clearly articulated. Main glazed entrance is off centre to north on the long continuous western elevation, incorporated into a continuous clerestory ribbon, under the saw tooth roofline descending from liturgical east to west. Two glazed rooflights at the corners of this western roofline mark the steps down from nave to hall and hall to sacristy.

At the north end (the liturgical east), the roofline thrusts up to a clerestory over the sanctuary, glazed on its eastern face, with simple steel cross on north face. Sanctuary also lit from tall and narrow glazed panels at ground level on either side where the building steps out to the north. Side doorway and banded windows beneath the eaves wrapping around the NE angle where the main body of the church steps out beyond the sanctuary.

Hall stepped down from church and stepped in on plan to E: doorway and banded windows wrapping the SE angle as before. Similar detail to sacristy, stepped down again with wraparound glazed SE corner before final step in with east facing side entrance and blind boiler room block chamfered on SE side. Here the roof sweeps outward with its timber eaves at the extreme SW resting on a boundary wall which rises to meet it in the same materials as the church walls, with timber gate.