A blustery day, but sunny. A bus ride (finally!) across the city to that most salubrious of Swansea's suburbs, Newton. To a place of private roads, hidden villas, occasional glimpses of the sea, and St Peter's church. Another Late Victorian/Edwardian church by that prolific architect Edward Bruce Vaughan, but in far better condition than poor old St Paul's up the valley in Plasmarl.
St Peter stands on a corner amongst pine trees, solid, well-massed and not a little comfortable. Quarry faced snecked masonry of Bridgend Sandstone. Some rich detailing (Bath Stone) all in the best Bodley and Garner mode. Some of it put me in mind of Melrose Abbey, that remarkable Late Gothic building in the Scottish Borders. Incomplete s tower, massive and intriguing. As at St Paul's Plasmarl the e end more interesting than the nave.
The rich detailing continues inside, but on the whole it's a rather dull interior - short nave of three bays and longish chancel, oddly the walls are in the same snecked masonry as the exterior. No fittings of real note. Sedilia.
In all a bit disappointing, really. Perhaps Bruce Vaughan can be thought of as a competent though pedestrian architect with, however, flashes of brilliance.
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