Church of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows, Dolgellau

Introduction

The Church of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows in Dolgellau, in the Diocese of Wrexham was built between 1963 and 1966, designed by architect Maurice Pritchard and built by John Evans and Sons. The church was consecrated on Whit Monday 1970. Built in local stone, the church's altars incorporate stones from the Holy Land.

History

In 1928, a priest from Malta, Father Francis Scalpell (1895-1970), came to Dolgellau as the first Catholic priest since the Reformation. Initially services were held in a stable which was later extended into a fish and chip shop with the help of Italian prisoners of war. In the early 1960s an anonymous donor provided sufficient funds to begin the present church, specifying that it must harmonise with Dolgellau and its mountainous setting.

Architecture and furnishings

The church is of rock-faced grey stone with a slate roof, in Romanesque style. The deep round-arched doorway is flanked by heraldic panels representing Wales and Malta, with a third panel representing the papacy and a large crucifix over the door. To the right of the doorway, two apsidal chapels stand at right angles to each other, the Baptistery and the Lady Chapel. The left elevation has three tall round-headed windows, then a projecting bay with a doorway and window over.

A square bell turret with paired openings at the bell stage and a low pyramidal roof, and a tall round-headed window. To the rear, beyond the apse, is the rendered end of the vestry. The right hand elevation has lunette windows. At the rear of the right hand side of the church, at right angles, is the Presbytery, a two-storey two-window house, rendered, with a hipped slate roof.

The nave has a roof of open trusses with king-posts with raking struts, and a floor of quarry tiles. The apsidal sanctuary has five stained glass windows of the Evangelists and the Holy Spirit. Italian brass screens and gates to either side of the sanctuary, a baldachino above the altar, and a bronze crown of thorns to the altar frontal are all significant elements of the original design. The right aisle has four round-arched bays plus a chapel at the sanctuary end, the Chapel of the Most Precious Blood, under a lower arch and with a doorway to the vestry.

The aisle is lit by lunette windows, one with stained glass. The round piers of the aisle arcade are pierced with squints to give a view of the altar. At the west end of the aisle is the apsidal Lady Chapel, and then at right angles, the apsidal Baptistery with seven windows symbolising the Seven gifts of the Spirit. The left side of the nave has, at the sanctuary end, an arched recess with a confessional and a tall window under the bell turret, then two arches to a recessed area.

The nave then narrows and is lit by tall round-headed windows. The church is listed as a remarkable expression of the revival of Roman Catholicism in North Wales in the post-war period. The building successfully introduces elements of modernity into a broadly traditional layout, in a rugged style apt for its setting.