St Margaret's Church in Bodelwyddan is a landmark feature of the North Wales landscape
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People driving from Cheshire to North Wales may be familiar with the incredible church spire at Bodelwyddan. Jayne Coxall said that as a child, it was the signal that she had arrived in North Wales for her family holiday.
She told NorthWalesLive: "For me, it was always a sign that we properly arrived in North Wales. I knew it was called the Marble Church. But when I was young I thought that was because the spire, was made from marble, it seemed so white."
Jayne is now the Priest in charge of St Margaret’s Church, which is the Marble Church's formal name. Thousands of people use the spire as a way marker on the A55, as Jayne did as a child. But now, she also greatly values its illustrious 162 year history and its role in the community.
Its spire is visible for miles around, rising 202ft above the Vale of Clwyd in Denbighshire. This week, steeplejacks have been enjoying views from a church known as the “Pearl of the Vale” when it was first built – one that was to become pilgrimage site for nurses and a shrine to the Spanish Flu pandemic.
In the wake of more a recent pandemic, when the church lay eerily quiet save the peel of its bells, visitors are once again rediscovering its allure. “They may have driven past it hundreds of times, wondering what it was like inside,” said Rev Coxall, "We’re now seeing them calling at the church again. People say that, despite its closeness to the A55, it is still wonderfully calm and peaceful inside.”
At present, the church is open just twice-a-week, for Sunday Eucharist and Wednesday Communion. Rev Coxall is hoping the church will be open seven days-a-week by Easter, Covid permitting. This will be great news for anyone wanting to sample the church’s exotic, Gothic style architecture. It was commissioned by Lady Margaret Willoughby de Broke, daughter of Sir John Williams of nearby Bodelwyddan Castle, in memory of her Warwickshire baron husband, Henry Peyto-Verney.
The church took a little over four years and cost a staggering £60,000 - a little over £7m in today's money. It was consecrated by the Bishop of St Asaph on August 23, 1860. As the parish of St Asaph already had a church, its bishop had to agree to the creation of the new Bodelwyddan parish to site Lady Margaret’s building.
The church was designed by John Gibson, best known for his rebuilding work on the Houses of Parliament after a fire there in 1834. Its ornate architectural style is mirrored in the two buildings: St Margaret’s eagle-on-a-rock lectern was carved by Warwick’s TH Kendall, who also carved 22 panels for the members dining room at the House of Commons.
Expert stonemasons from across North Wales, especially Anglesey, were hired to construct the church using limestone from Raynes quarry in Llanddulas. As this resembled porcelain in appearance, it gave the building its famous lustre, which remained a gleaming white until the late 20th century when pollution began to tinge it grey.
So, the Marble Church soubriquet refers not to its gleaming exterior but to the wealth of marble inside. Famously, it incorporates 14 varieties from countries across Europe.
Pillars are made of Belgian Red marble, while a nave entrance uses Anglesey marble and shafts of French Languedoc marble on bases of English Purbeck marble. Another variety, Carrara marble from Tuscany, was used to make the font. On this are carvings of the two daughters of the font’s donor, Sir Hugh Williams.
Adding to the multinational sourcing was the Aberdeen granite used to construct two nooks by the western entrance. This was a nod to Scots-born St Kentigern, who founded a monastery in the Vale of Clwyd. With St Margaret, he one one the two saints to whom the church is dedicated.
The nave’s red marble pillars have richly carved capitals featuring leeks, thistles, shamrocks, Tudor roses and passion flowers. According to the Marble Church website, these “are not repeated in any church of comparable size in existence”.
Above the pillars are carved corbels with one of the few clues that suggest the church was built as a memorial. They bear the initials of Lady Margaret and her late husband Henry.
In the tower there are eight bells, made by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, London. More music is provided by the organ, originally a small manual instrument located in the west gallery from where the church choir sang.
In the mid 1960s it was replaced by a much larger organ built by Cowin of Liverpool using second-hand parts from other redundant organs. With no space left for the choir, its members were relocated to the current choir stalls, originally the Bodelwyddan Castle family seats.
By 2017, the Cowin organ was in need of costly repairs after more than 50 years of service. It was replaced with a modern Allen digital instrument, freeing up the organ alcove. This was filled by a similar instrument to the 1860 original – a 1851 organ by John Laycock from Yorkshire, one of his earliest known examples. It was installed in 2019, just before Covid’s arrival, and will be used when concerts are again permitted.
Adding to the church’s sense of serenity are its Victorian stained-glass windows. At the base of its finely carved pulpit are five angels supporting panels of the saints.
For those unable to experience St Margaret’s in person, help will soon be at hand. In the run-up to Easter, all services will be broadcast online by Radio Glan Clwyd, the station broadcasting to patients at the nearby hospital.
“As it’s online, anyone will be able to tune in,” said Rev Coxall. “We believe we are the first to offer this kind of service.”
Another innovation, introduced in 2013, was the use of mobile phone QR codes to tell visitors why more than 80 Canadian war graves are located outside the church.
In the aftermath of the First World War, 17,400 Canadian service men and women were stationed in cramped huts at nearby Kinmel Park Camp awaiting repatriation.
Forbidden from leaving the camp, they fell prey to the deadly Spanish Flu outbreak that swept the world in 1918–19. Some 78 Canadians died and were buried at St Margaret’s.
As tensions in the camp rose, the dead were joined by five more of their comrades. A riot broke out among the demoralised soldiers and at one point it was feared they might loot Rhyl.
A common story, long been denied by the Canadian government, is that the five men were executed for mutiny. Working in the camp at the time was a 26-year-old Canadian called Rebecca MacIntosh. She was a nursing sister who battled day and night to stem the tide of Spanish Flu at Kimnel Park’s Canadian General Hospital.
Two days after the mutiny, she was dead, another victim the disease. Her memorial holds sway over the Marble Church’s cemetery, still a place of pilgrimage for nurses around the world. A total of 112 World War I service personnel from the Commonwealth are commemorated in the graveyard.
By their nature, all churches harbour some sense of sadness. At St Margaret’s the gloom is kept firmly at arm’s length by its opulence and ebullience.
In such surroundings, it’s not surprising it should be a hugely popular wedding venue: names are in the book for 2024 already. To get married there you must live in the Bodelwyddan Mission Area, which also includes Rhyl, Rhuddlan and Towyn, or have some qualifying connection to the church. And if you don’t, you can still qualify if you attend church once a month for at least six months.
It’s a commitment plenty of people are willing to undertake. “The last couple to get married here before lockdown qualified this way,” said Rev Coxall.
Far from being a back-door ruse, many qualifying couples return to the church, it being a life waymarker as well as a geographical one.
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