Our Lady of Mount Carmel Lampeter

Introduction

The church was designed by London architect Thomas Henry Birchall Scott and constructed in 1939-40.

History

The fitting out of the church resulted from a partnership of client, architect, and Catholic artists and craftsmen and women. Scott was a founder of the Guild of Catholic Artists and Craftsmen, and some of its members made furnishings for the church. The nave originally had chairs, which were later replaced with benches.

Architecture and furnishings

The church is a simple whitewashed roughcast group of Church and Presbytery with grey-green slate roofs, with the gabled church with round-arched windows coming forward on the right and a neo-Georgian house attached to the left. Externally, the church is of exemplary simplicity, steep-roofed with nave, chancel, and a 3-sided apse. The interior contrasts complex spatial divisions with simple building materials, as the chancel and apse are divided off by identical cross walls with broad arches and echoing open lunettes above.

The church has a south end gallery over a brick-fronted inner porch with a room on each side, the east one being the baptistery. The three painted lunettes are by Mary Malburn. The carved stone reredos panel is by P J Lindsey Clarke, according to Welsh Gazette 18 July 1940. Much of the internal woodworking, including the Stations of the Cross and the statues flanking the sanctuary arch, is by Jaroslav Krechler. The Catholic church at Lampeter was a Carmelite foundation, built under the auspices of the head of the Carmelite community at Aberystwyth.

Visiting

The church stands on rising ground above the west end of Bryn Road, overlooking a triangular green opposite Shiloh Presbyterian Chapel. The door to the nave has an arched canvas painted lunette, and broader arched doors with wrought iron screens are on each side.