St Joseph – Penarth

Introduction

St Joseph – Penarth is a large Italian Romanesque style church, oriented east-west, on a prominent site at the junction of Wordsworth Avenue and Coleridge Avenue in Penarth. St Joseph's has a church hall for parish groups. St Joseph's conducts an annual Mass attendance count over four Sundays.

Architecture and furnishings

The architect was F A Walters (1850-1932) of London, a leading architect of Roman Catholic churches at the turn of the century. The church has a basilican plan with aisled nave, north and south transepts, sanctuary at the east end with flanking north and south apsidal chapels. The walls are in grey-brown stone with rendered panels and bathstone dressings, and the roofs are slate. The west front has three bays of arcading, a steep gable, a wheel window, and a shallow porch with tympanum over the doorway.

The interior has a nave of five bays with alternating cylindrical and grouped shafts and interlace capitals. The sanctuary has a canopied sculptural reredos to the original polychrome altar with Agnus Dei flanked by Angels and Evangelists below. The apsidal Lady Chapel to the south has a polychrome marble altar and a sculptured reredos of Madonna and Child flanked by male and female saints. At the west end are bases of planned towers, the south one having a south-facing porch.

To the north, a vestry and corridor connect the church with the adjacent presbytery. The south return of the south tower base has a gabled porch with arcading over a round-headed doorway, and the doors have elaborate strap hinges. The south nave elevation has five bays, each with a clerestorey window with arcading over, and each aisle bay has a circular window. The transept has two blind arcaded bays facing west and a gable elevation of two bays with an upper round window and two tall round-arched windows.

The east end has a projecting gabled sanctuary at a lower level, with three bays with arcading over and three round-headed windows, the central one placed higher. The north elevation follows the south but lacks the porch in the tower base. The interior has a wooden boarded and panelled roof supported on corbelled wall shafts rising from the arcade. Clerestorey windows are flanked by blind round-headed panels.

Aisles have stations of the cross in shallow aedicules, with round windows to the south aisle and round-headed doors to the vestry and corridor in the north aisle. To the west, an organ gallery over the lobby has a broad elliptical arch flanked by round arches. The crossing area's west arch has an inner order on corbels. The crossing area's left (north) arch has two arches at ground level with a round shaft and responds, and a single large arch over.

To the sides of the chancel arch are statues of St Joseph and St Peter, with stained glass windows over at clerestorey level. The pulpit and altar rail are in inlaid marble.