In 14th century Europe, young noblewomen often had just two life choices —
marriage vows or religious vows.

But at Llandawke in Carmarthenshire, knight's daughter Margaret Marloes had the opportunity to walk a different path.

A thread for #WomensHistoryMonth
Margaret's uncle — Sir Guy de Bryenne, Lord Marcher of Laugharne — was wealthy but also devout. He founded St Martin's in Laugharne (pictured), now the burial place of Dylan Thomas.

And at Llandawke, Sir Guy built a small chapel for his niece, where she founded a beguinage ...
That's a community of women who wanted to live a religious life but not to withdraw from the world.

The beguines lived, worked, worshipped and prayed together in the seclusion of this peaceful and leafy dell, but they weren't nuns, and they had freedom of movement.
As the head of this unusual sacred community, Margaret Marloes was revered for her holiness, and after her death she was locally acclaimed as a saint.

Her uncle built another church four miles from Llandawke, which he dedicated to her: St Margaret Marloes', Eglwyscummin.
Margaret Marloes' chapel at Llandawke — the centre of her religious community — became St Oudoceus's, and is now in our care.

A worn and broken effigy of Margaret in flowing robes lies in the church. In her hands she clasps her own heart.
In 'The Sacred Life of St Margaret Marloes', our trustee Dr John Morgan-Guy tells Margaret's story and explores the symbolism and legends connected with her battered effigy.

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More from @friendschurches

Mar 4
The font at Castlemartin is 900 yrs old, but the tool marks are still plain to see: from the diagonal saw marks to the centre-point and marking out of the compass in the scallop decoration.
We'll never know who made this font, but these details bring the past a little closer.
#🧵
The font is pretty monumental. It’s a square cushion bowl on a cylindrical stem with a pretty scalloped trim to the bowl and a foliate design at the edges.

St Michael’s, Castlemartin in Pembs is a monumental church, so it’s fitting that it has such a substantial old font.
2/
In fact, a few of the churches we own in Pembrokeshire are whoppers. They’re almost organic in form: tall tapering towers reaching to the sky, accretions and ruinations of aisles, chapels, transepts and vestries, tangles of chimneys, bounding arcades, bricked up doorways…

3/
Read 6 tweets
Mar 1
A church was first recorded at Papworth St Agnes, Cambs in 1217, though there may have been a timber Saxon church on the site long before that — 'Papworth' comes from the Anglo Saxon for 'the enclosure of Papa's people'.

But what did ‘Papa’ have to do with St Agnes?

#thread Image
The church we care for today is known as St John the Baptist’s. It’s mostly Victorian but still includes medieval doorways and a tower arch. The four lion grotesques below the tower parapet may also come from an older building.

So, was the earlier church dedicated to St Agnes? ImageImage
No! In fact, from the 13th until the 17th century the church was dedicated to St Peter.
Read 8 tweets
Feb 25
How it started … how it’s going …

Saltfleetby church was built on a Lincolnshire salt marsh. The landscape is melancholic. Long straight roads, drainage ditches, desultory farmsteads, big medieval churches. Flat lands with empty horizons.

#thread
Church-moving is rare... But that is exactly what happened at Old St Peter's. The west tower is all that remains of the medieval church when the rest of the building was moved in 1877.

2/
It was moved partly because it was felt to be in the wrong position, but also because it had started to move (the tower is still on a definite lean). The architect, James Fowler re-sited the body of the medieval church from its original position in Charlesgate Rd to North End Ln.
Read 8 tweets
Feb 22
The earliest English & Welsh burial records go back to 1538, when Henry VIII made it law that parishes keep registers of baptisms, marriages and burials.
But a few records and medieval memorials survive to give us clues about people who were laid to rest in earlier times.
#thread
The earliest record of a burial at St Beuno's, Penmorfa, is found in The History of the Gwydir Family, written by Sir John Wynn of Gwydir Castle in Caernarvonshire (1553-1626). The book, which was a big hit in 17thC North Wales, aimed to show that Sir John had royal ancestry.

2/
Sir John wrote that in abt 1450, Ivan Ap Meredith Ap Howell (constable of Criccieth) had joint command of Caernarfon but "dying at Caernarvon, his body was brought by sea (for the passages by land were shut by Owen Glyndwr's forces), to Penmorva, his parish church, to be buried."
Read 7 tweets
Feb 20
What does a Catholic chapel in the Cotswolds have in common with an Anglican church in the mountains of Cyprus?

Come with us on a journey from Brownshill to Troodos to find out … ImageImage
In the late 1920s, Bertha Kessler and Katherine Hudson founded a Catholic retreat at Brownshill, in the Cotswolds, for people suffering from mental illness. They were inspired to build a chapel there, overlooking the Golden Valley. Image
They took their modest budget to W.D. Caröe, architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. At 73, he had already designed 30 Anglican and non-conformist churches. The distinctive church he created at Brownshill — along with its furnishings — was eclectic, yet unpretentious ...
Read 14 tweets
Feb 19
There are remains of roodscreens in ~300 churches in Wales. They were constructed in a short period: two generations either side of 1500, and take three forms: veranda, coved and vaulted.

This survival at Llanelieu is the most complete example of a veranda loft in Wales.
#thread
Towards the of last year the @RCAHMWales published, Painted Temples: Wallpaintings and Rood-screens in Welsh Churches, 1200–1800 by Richard Suggett. For information and images, this book is a treasure trove.  

Order it here: bit.ly/3BwgxmE

2/
One chapter deals exclusively with rood screen, which in Wales are distinctive not only for their “lavish enrichment, fluent decoration and curious carvings”, but also for the literary dimension – as several screens had poems written about them.

3/
Read 8 tweets

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