The former church of St Luke is set into the wooded hillside above the Ebbw Vale just above the centre of Abercarn, reached up a side road and approached through a shallow stone tiled gateway and up a steep terraced double flight of steps to the towering west front. Only the soaring south tower is seen from afar. It was built in 1923-6 (foundation stone dated AD MLM xxiii) to designs of architect J.Coates Carter, of Cardiff and Penarth, in a dramatically simplified Early Gothic style. It became redundant in the 1980s but is Listed Grade II*, notwithstanding its condition - a disused shell - as one of the most strikingly original churches built in Britain between the World Wars.
The church is an awesome sight, sheer walls of hammerdressed local sandstone almost devoid of ashlar dressings. The central entrance is cavernous, its massive lintel set under a wide, smooth four-centred arch with a concave lip abruptly meeting the rough walling above. With a crypt to both left and rigt here, a further flight of steps rises to the church floor level. The church consists of a continuous aiseled nave and chancel with clerestory and north porch. Long lancets are grouped in twos and threes with a stepped east group of five. Internally the space is subdivided into chancel and four-and-a-half-bay nave by chamfered piers continuous with wide four-centred arches. The building was reported in 1958 to be suffering from severe subsidence and structural defects which the substitution of flat concrete roofs failed to cure. The church closed in about 1980.

Source: J.Newman, Buildings of Wales: Gwent/Monmouthshire (2000), p.88.

RCAHMW, 10 February 2015