Denomination Church in Wales Founded 11th Century Status Active Phone +44 29 2048 4808 | Previous denomination Roman Catholic Dedication St Margaret of Antioch Functional status Mother church | |
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Address Roath Church Vicarage/Waterloo Rd, Cardiff CF23 5AD, United Kingdom Similar St German's Church, St John the Baptist Church, Insole Court, Llandaff Cathedral, Roath Park | ||
St Margaret's Church (dedicated to St Margaret of Antioch) is a nineteenth-century Church in Wales parish church in the suburb of Roath, Cardiff, Wales. It includes the mausoleum of the Marquises of Bute.
Contents
History
A church dedicated to St Margaret existed in Roath since the medieval period. It was a small Perpendicular style building with a bell-turret at the western end. In 1800 a mausoleum was added, for the Marquises of Bute. The church was completely demolished in 1868 to make way for a new replacement.
The new church was completed, with a cruciform plan in a Decorated Gothic style. The plan had been designed by Alexander Roos, architect to the Butes. The above ground church was designed by architect John Prichard and financed by John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, who dismissed Roos when he came of age in 1868. A wide variety of coloured bricks and coloured stone was used to decorate the internal walls, in red, blue, white, grey-green and pink. The church tower (without the spire envisaged by Prichard) was designed later by John Coates Carter and completed in 1926.
The glasswork of the church's east window was destroyed in a bomb-blast during the Second World War. The present glass, dating from 1952, depicts the Ascension of Jesus, flanked by the patron saints of the four daughter churches: St Edward's, St Anne's, St Agnes's and St Philip's. Of these churches, only St Edward's still holds a daughter position. St Agnes's closed in 1966 and St Anne's in 2015. St Philip is still an operational church, but is no longer in the parish after the boundaries were adjusted in the late 20th Century.
The building became Grade I listed in 1975.
Bute mausoleum
An ornate north aisle chapel was added to the church between 1881 and 1886, as the new mausoleum for the Bute family tombs. Seven large sarcophagi in red granite, were added to contain the remains of the members of the Bute family who had been interred in the previous church. The original stone memorial plaques were included in the new tombs.
Those interred in the sarcophagi are: