Cardiff Metropolitan Cathedral
Cardiff, Glamorgan
The Metropolitan Cathedral is in the heart of Cardiff City Centre, offering a place of worship to people who both visit and work in the capital.
The church was designed in a Neogothic style by the Scottish architect Frederick Thomas Pilkington, and originally belonged to the Presbyterian denomination. The same architect was also responsible for Barclay Viewforth Church in Edinburgh. Pilkington made a point of using local materials and created a gabled roof with an octagonal spire. In 1893, the west front was redesigned by another architect, EM Bruce Vaughan, who built a new porch. After a fire in 1910, Vaughan added a new hammerbeam roof.
In 1972, when the United Reformed Church was created by a merger of the Congregational Church in England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church of England, City URC became part of the Province of Wales within the new denomination.