St Mary's Church, Magor

It is possible that the church was originally dedicated to Cadwaladr, the last Welsh ruler to call himself King of Britain, who died of the plague in 664 AD.^[3] The church was subsequently dedicated to St Leonard, until the mid-nineteenth century restoration, when it was rededicated to St Mary.^[2][4]

John Newman, in his 2000 Gwent/Monmouthshire volume of the Pevsner Buildings of Wales series, describes St Mary's as "one of the most ambitious churches in the county, though the ambitions were not all realised."^[5] It is in the Decorated style with a prominent, integral, tower.^[4] The porch, of the fourteenth/fifteenth centuries, has buttresses which display "ferocious gargoyles and pinnacles."^[5]

The interior contains nineteenth-century, stained glass, including The Good Shepherd by Kempe & Co of 1930–31.^[5] The churchyard is the burial place of Welsh composer Mansel Thomas (1909–1986).^[6]

Next to the church stands The Procurator's House, a sixteenth-century house, now ruined, which belonged to the vicarage of Magor.^[7]

• Newman, John (2000). Gwent/Monmouthshire. The Buildings of Wales. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-071053-1.