A couple of years before we took the church at Hardmead into our care, two masons, Stedman and Hollowell were on the roof repairing the medieval crenellations. They used a small tin to make a time capsule, and buried it within the walls.
Last week, we unearthed it.
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It’s just over 40yrs old, but finding a time capsule is such a thrill. It’s meeting a person who worked on this church before you. It’s a reminder that we “are only trustees for those that come after us”. That we’re just fleeting moments in the long lives of these places.
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Elsewhere, we found a scrunched-up newspaper – the front page of the Daily Worker from Tuesday 1st April 1947. Perhaps one of Hardmead’s earlier workers had been reading about Clement Attlee, MI5, and the price of tangerines on their lunch-break.
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The Daily Worker was founded by the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1930, but at the time our Hardmead reader was clutching a copy, it was an independent readers' co-operative – as proudly stated on the cover.
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It’s a long shot, but I wonder if anyone knows who our Hardmead masons might be…?
I’m excited for what else we might discover during our repairs, and we will, of course, leave a small record of our team, to be discovered by posterity.
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A marriage of faith, farming, landscape and language, placenames remind us of the personal, poetic origins of a location. This is true for Llangua.
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‘Llan’ is an enclosure usually associated with a church. The element which follows, most commonly a personal name, is mutated. Llangua is the church of St Cywa (English: Kew, Ciwa).
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Although there is no obvious physical evidence for a church being here before the 12th century, the survival of that placename is our first clue in understanding the development of the religious foundation on this site.
The sanctuary of St Philip’s, Caerdeon is a bejewelled Byzantine-esque treat.
In this thread, we will explore the history and details of this beautiful ensemble.
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Casting a kaleidoscope of jewel-toned light across the sanctuary, the east window was produced by the Kempe studio, one of Victorian Britain’s preeminent stained glass firms.
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Intriguingly, this stunning window takes the form of a continental church altarpiece: a crucifixion scene situated within a classical frame, adorned with sumptuous baroque details such as fluted golden Corinthians, foliate swags, and flaming urns.
With a 15th-century rood loft hovering over rows of 18th-century box pews, the interior of St David’s, Llangeview in Monmouthshire offers a glimpse into the forms of worship from two bygone ages.
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Spanning the entire width of the nave, the rood loft is a relic from the late medieval past. Before the Reformation, the rood loft would have carried the rood, a carving of Christ on the cross.
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Alongside Christ, there would have been carved depictions of the Virgin Mary and John the Apostle. Sadly, none of the medieval roods survived the Reformation.
Caught Moss-Handed: how the rare mosses on the roof of St James’s, Llangua enabled the conviction of two criminals in the 1950s.
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In the summer of 1951, a farmer spotted two men climbing on the roof of Llangua church at dusk. Unfortunately, by the time the police arrived, the men had fled the scene.
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After committing further criminals acts in the local area — namely the theft of tools and car batteries — the authorities caught the men, who turned out to be two brothers that had come to Monmouthshire from Cardiff.
Across the centuries, the saintly dedication of a parish church can change — and at Manordeifi in Pembrokeshire, it is thought that the church's dedication has shifted several times throughout its long history.
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A Christian place of worship at Manordeifi is believed to have stood on the site of the present church since the 7th century. The earliest church here was reportedly dedicated to St Llawddog.
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A son of the Prince of Usk and a renowned as a miracle-worker, Llawddog became the focus of a popular local saintly cult. As such, there are thought to be four other churches in the region that were also originally dedicated to him.