For inquiries related to the Church in Wales, specifically at Eglwys yng Nghymru, you can contact the Ministry Area Office at 01633 852828. We are a Friendly Open community located in the Heart of Newport, serving as a welcoming place for everyone, including those at St Mark Anglican Church Newport.
The church of St Mark at Gold Tops, like many churches in Newport and elsewhere, is the result of the Victorian church-building spree. The parish of St Woolos covered the whole borough of Newport (west of the river) until St Paul’s was built in the 1830s, and the rapidly growing population of the town through the 19th century meant new churches from all denominations. The Anglicans – which then meant the Church of England – were keen to keep up and provide pews for their worshippers. There had been a ‘mission church’ called St Mark’s in Bridge Street but local churchgoers were keen to build a permanent church in the area.
The population of Newport had grown from just over 1,000 in 1801 to 27,000 in 1871, and would reach almost 70,000 by the end of the century as the town’s boundaries grew larger. There were no Anglican churches between St Woolos and St Mary, Malpas, on the western side of the Usk. There had been plenty of Baptist, Methodist and Roman Catholic churches and chapels built as people came from all over the United Kingdom and further afield to work in the town and in the coal, railway and docks industries.
The Monmouthshire Merlin and the Star of Gwent carried notices of a meeting on 13 January 1870 “for taking into consideration the necessity of providing increased Church Accommodation in the [St Mark’s] district”. The meeting agreed to launch an appeal to build a church of at least 800 seats, “of which 500 at the least shall be free and unappropriated”. Churches could still charge pew rents, where the wealthiest could buy places closer to the front of the church so the poorest were stuck at the back. The new church actually ended up without rented pews when it opened.
Luckily for the committee, Charles Morgan, Lord Tredegar, was a member and offered them a site for the church and a large amount of the funding, as long as he had the choice of design and the architects. Over the next century, many of the key sites in Newport – including the Royal Gwent Hospital, Belle Vue Park and Rodney Parade – would be given to the town by the Tredegars.
But raising money in the 1870s was no easier than in the 2020s. The original plan was to raise £5,000 (just over £500,000 in today’s money), the builders’ first estimate was £6,000, and in the first year the committee had raised less than £3,000. His Lordship was not best pleased and threatened to withdraw his offer of land rather than have a ‘substandard’ building.
Eventually, Lord Tredegar was mollified and more money donated, not without letters to the press from the Secretary to the committee, Thomas Colbourne. He warned that the project might fail without greater support from “the friends of the Church”: “Is the Church of England so fallen from its high estate that it cannot even erect one additional Church in the midst of our teeming population?”
Lord Tredegar chose his architects and Rosamund, Lady Tredegar, laid the foundation stone on 20 July 1872. It was a bit of a family affair as their son, Octavius Morgan MP, presented her with a silver trowel for the job! The MP said that his wish was for the church to have a magnificent tower which would be ‘a public monument to the generosity of the people of Monmouthshire’.
The church was largely completed by 1874 and the opening ceremony was held on 3 July 1874. The Right Reverend Alfred Ollivant, Bishop of Llandaff (the diocese of Monmouth would not exist for almost another 50 years), presided at a Communion service at 11.00 am. The dignitaries retired to the King’s Head Hotel on High Street for a celebratory meal before a second service at 7.00pm.
Despite the celebrations, the church had still not raised enough money to meet the costs of the building. The Western Mail commented that it had cost £6,000 but the building fund was £2,000 short of this amount. So even on the opening day, there were still calls for donations to make up the shortfall.
The Vicar of St Woolos handed over a large portion of his parish to the new Vicar of St Mark’s, the Rev’d Thomas Llewelyn Lister. The Bridge Street ‘mission church’ was renamed St Luke’s and the new parish covered parts of central Newport, including Baneswell, the Marshes Road (now Shaftesbury Street) and the ‘outer parts’ of the existing St Woolos parish north of the Castle. However, apart from the Shaftesbury area, there were very few houses between St Mark’s and Malpas. The Fields Park Road/Avenue area was still just one house, called The Fields, and other parts of the new parish, such as Ridgeway and Allt-yr-yn were still unbuilt.
Right Reverend Alfred Ollivant DD (1798-1882), Bishop of Llandaff from 1849 until his death. Bishop Ollivant consecrated St Mark's on 4 July 1874. (Picture from en.wikipedia.org)
Reverend Thomas Llewellyn Lister (1839-1926), appointed first Vicar of the new St Mark's parish in 1874. Rev'd Lister had been in charge of the mission church on Bridge Street (which later became St Luke's) since the 1860s
Charles Robinson Morgan, 1st Baron Tredegar (1792-1875). Lord Tredegar gave the land and a large amount of the funding needed to build St Mark's.