St Mary’s Church Music…..

 I don’t know if you’re into music like I am but I thought I might add some more information about the music ministry they have at St Mary’s Church. They have a good solid Choir and they practice during the week and sing at all services including weekdays and on a regular Sunday and other major events throughout the year. 

 

The Organ

 

The link below shows it stop specifications

http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=D07281

 The Organ here at St Mary’s is a very fine 3 Manual instrument built by Hill Norman installed in 1959 over the years it was restored by J W Walker and sons and most recently by them in 1998, it is as you know is used for Church Services, Recitals, Practicing and Teaching and I happened to have had regular use of it some time ago and it’s a very loud organ to negotiate, on the organ itself it has a very loud “Tuba” on the choir organ along with a very meaty Trombone on the Pedal.   

History of St Mary’s Church……

It is often said that the current St Mary’s is the fifth or sixth church on the site. This is an oversimplification. The church has evolved, retaining earlier features while striking out on new courses.

Christianity first reached the Gower through Celtic missionaries. However, it was only with the arrival of the Normans that a church was first built in Swansea, possibly as early as the twelfth century. For most of the Middle Ages, the right to appoint a vicar for St Mary’s and to enjoy the income of the church’s estates was in the hands of the hospital of St David. Adjacent to St Mary’s and founded in 1332, elements of the hospital’s architecture can still be seen in the present Cross Keys pub. The fourteenth century saw the rebuilding of St Mary’s in the Decorated gothic style and by 1343 it is known to have contained at least two subsidiary chapels dedicated to St Anne and the Holy Trinity.

Mediaeval worship and piety flourished until the Reformation. Priests prayed daily for the souls of the dead, and an extensive collection of vestments and metalwork enabled the full panoply of Catholic liturgy until the Protestant changes of Edward VI. Edward’s reign also saw the transfer of the right to appoint the Vicar of Swansea to the Herbert family, through which it eventually found its way into the evangelical Church Patronage Society in 1840. There were extensive changes to the interior of the building and its furnishings during the reformation

era from Edward VI to Elizabeth I. For example, vestments were abandoned and vernacular services (in both English and Welsh) were introduced.

St Mary’s was caught up in the seventeenth century (along with the whole of Swansea) in the British civil wars. Revd Morgan Hopkins was ejected for royalist sympathies and had to wait for the Restoration of Charles II to be reinstated. By 1700 significant weaknesses were starting to appear in the fabric of the mediaeval building. This process culminated in the collapse of the nave in 1739. The replacement nave was small and cheap and a constant headache for later generations. Significant enhancements to church life were however afforded by the addition of a new organ in the 1760s, gas lighting in the early 1820s, the benefaction of a valuable baroque painting of the Madonna and Child (1825), and the enhancement of the bells (1720, 1879).

The Church of England was hampered in its response to the rapid industrialisation and rising population of Swansea from the mid eighteenth century onwards. Ineffective attempts to augment the seating capacity of St Mary’s were eventually superceded in the reign of Queen Victoria by the construction of new churches. Initiated by two dynamic Incumbents, Edward Burnard Squire and James Allen Smith, this ‘Church Extension’ has continued with fits and starts until the present day. The climax of Smith’s ministry was the reconstruction of St Mary’s itself in the 1890s when the fourteenth century chancel and tower with the eighteenth century nave were replaced by a unified Early English gothic design of Sir Arthur Blomfield.

Blomfield’s church was beautified internally throughout the early twentieth century, but tragically burned to the ground in February 1941 as a result of German bombing. Reconstruction took until 1959 to plan and execute. Financial reasons necessitated the design by Percy Thomas and Sons adopt the footprint of the Victorian edifice, although much of the internal decoration reflects more contemporary ecclesiastical art. Rebuilt almost in its entirety, St Mary’s possesses a rare artistic unity, product of the great vision of successive vicars Jack Thomas and Harry Williams.

Survivals from the past

Swansea was founded about 900 years ago. The oldest written accounts touching on the same area are just 2,000 years ago. However, objects have been found and monuments exist in the landscape which go back up to 75,000 years. So, for centuries, Swansea people lived their lives in the presence of puzzling traces of their ancestors. For example, take the Bronze Age stones which once stood at West Cross. None exist today, but for hundreds of years they were features of local life. Whitestone Lane still zigzags out of Newton village. Whitestone school lies on the western edge of the West Cross housing. The 1844 tithe map of Ostermouth parish shows a house called Whitestone near the edge of Clyne Common, with “Hoarstone, Stone fawr, and Whitestone”, as elements in nineteen fieldnames in the same area. There are similar references to a great stone, which apparently stood on the hill above Penclawdd until the 19th century.

( Swansea and its History Volume 1 by Gerald Gabb)

Introduction

Hi I’m Angela and I’ve wrote a little bit of history from Swansea. I have done this to show my computer skills, and for my second project.It is about the minning industry dating from the 12th century right up until the19th century. I think this would be interesting to people visiting the Swansea area, and I shall be updating this site once a week.

SA1

As the SA1 development continues the face of Swansea is for ever changing. New propeties are being devolped Castle Lofts High Street, Pearl studio apartment Princess Way, to name a few. Having lived in Swansea all my life I can see the difference in the town centre with many  shops closing as shopping centre’s are being opened on the outskirts of Swansea these are accesible by public transport and almost anything can be purchased from the stores there. When the development of the city centre is finished with its new roads shops and apartments  Swansea will still be a place to be proud of.

Swansea,s traffic system.

Swansea’s city centre is being devoloped into a one awy traffice system. The scheme is for a modern new transport system to provide a fast and reliable service between Morriston Hospital and Singleton Hospital. Work on the scheme will be suspened from November 18th. for the Christmas period. Hopefully when the work is completed it will make way for the new metro system planned for the city centre

Devlopement of Swansea,s lesure centre

Swansea’s leisure centre situated at Oyestermouth Road closed in november 2003 after serving the community for 25 years, it is to be upgraded at an estimated cost of £25m with the pool being upgraded and many new attractions.

Albert Hall

The Albert Hall situated on the corner of Cradock Street was built in 1864 as a Music Hall.It was opened as a cinema in 1937 and operated until 1976 when it was taken over by Rank Organisations to be used as a bingo hall .The bingo hall opened in April 1978 as The Top Rank Bingo Club the club operated sucssefully for 29 years until March 31st 2007 when  sadly the club closed and was sold to be redevolped apparently into flats.

Swansea’s devlopement.

Here we have pictures of David Evans the oldest deptartment store in Swansea which closed it doors for the last in January.The building has since been demolished to make way for a new shopping complex in the city centre.

Transportation

The construction of the railway made the transportation of the ore considerably easier. Then in the 1890’s a revolutionary new process of ore seperation enabled higher percentages of concentrate than had ever been achieved before. Ore was trapped in a layer of oil floating on tanks of water to achieve these percentages. To increase efficiency a horse drawn tramway was constructed from the victoria level to the flotation house.