St John The Baptist Church - Cardiff, Wales.
N 51° 28.833 W 003° 10.711
30U E 487603 N 5703281
St John the Baptist Church, located in a pedestrian precinct, Cardiff City Centre, Wales.
Waymark Code: WME81W
Location: South Wales, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 04/16/2012
Views: 5
The City Parish of St John the Baptist is among the oldest in Cardiff. The church is next to city centre's covered market, and is the oldest remaining mediaeval building in the city after Cardiff Castle, dating from 1090 AD.
"The first parish Church of Cardiff with its eight chapels of the Lordship of Cardiff was founded just before 1100 by Robert Fitzhamon, the first Lord of Glamorgan, on the banks of the river Taff (which gave the city its name - i.e. Caer-Dâf), and dedicated in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Saint Mary Street one of the town's central thoroughfares takes its name from this ancient foundation. At this time it served a growing town along with a chapel of ease, near Cardiff Castle, dedicated to St John the Baptist, less than half a mile away at the other end of St Mary Street.
Monastic and Gloucester connections
In 1180, the parish was placed the pastoral care of the Benedictine monks of the recently founded Tewksbury Abbey in Gloucestershire's Upper Severn valley. St. Mary's was ranked as a Priory, with a small monastic community whose priest-in-charge was the Prior. From 1190 a chaplain was appointed to serve St John's as the town and its market expanded in front of the Castle. St Mary's ceased to be a priory church in 1254, when the Benedictines appointed a Vicar who was not a monk. When the monasteries were dissolved during the reformation, the right to appoint clergy to St Mary's and St John's passed to the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester Cathedral, and this remained the case until disestablishment created the Church in Wales in 1921.A section of the south choir arcade is all that remains of the original stone building of St John the Baptist. It was sacked in 1404 during the rebellion of Owain Glyndwr, then it was reconstructed in the second half of the same century creating the fine perpendicular nave and tower which are such prominent features of the city today. In the 1880's aisles were added to the north and south sides of the the nave, and in the 1960's rooms for pastoral uses were built into the south aisle giving the church its present layout."
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