St Philip's Church, Caerdeon

William Edward Jelf (1811–1875) was a Classical scholar, clergyman and senior censor at Christ Church, Oxford. His entry in the Dictionary of National Biography records that "faults of temper and manner rendered him unpopular", and much of his life was devoted to pursuing a large number of liturgical and ecclesiological controversies. In the 1850s, Jelf purchased the Caerdeon estate and commissioned a church to the designs of his brother-in-law, John Louis Petit. Petit, an artist and architectural critic, was himself a magnet for controversy, spending much of his life in opposition to the prevailing tenets of Gothic Revival architecture advanced by Augustus Pugin. The construction and…

The architecture of St Philip's is unusual for its time and location. In addition to arguing for a sensitive approach to restoration and against the prevailing currents of the Gothic Revival, Petit, an experienced traveller, contended for the use of European sources. St Philip's, his only church and one of only two buildings known to have been designed by him, has been described variously as "rustic Mediterranean, Alpine, of French Basque influence or like an Italian farm building". The east window, with a crucifixion in stained glass by Charles Eamer Kempe, was inserted in 1892 in memory of Samuel Holland who purchased the Caerdeon estate in 1875. its status was upgraded to Grade I in 2018.