St Mary's Church, Llanfair Waterdine
Llanfair Waterdine Old Church pulled down Llanfair Waterdine May 1854 rebuilt St Mary's today
Illustrations from postcards available for sale in the Church.
There has been a church at Llanfair for 800 years
| 1140 | Chapels, under jurisdiction of Bishop of Hereford, built along River Teme at Bedstone, Bucknell, Stowe and Llanfair Waterdine. |
| 1397 | Record of Bishop's visitation mentions "vicar at Waterdine Church since old times." Parishioners plea for repairs to church, more furniture and books, new vestements for feast days and two chaplain instead of one. |
| 1582 | Bishop's visitation names Owen Lawrence, clerk, as curate and complains that there are no sermons! |
| 1642-49 | Civil War. Eposcopacy abolished. Prebysterian ministry established. Use of Book of Common Prayer and its services forbidden. Seems neighbourhood remained Royalist and was undisturbed. |
| 1672 | Petition presented at
Ludlow by Thomas Jordan, curate of
Llanfair Waterdine on behalf of many parishioners: "Our church, by
reason of
continuous burials therein,
hath hitherto been much disordered, in
the seats and pavements,
annoyed with unsavoury smells and
persons of
all sorts and degrees being usually buried
therein and very few in the churchyard." The judge ordered pavements to be repaired before the feast of the Nativity and no body to be buried within the church without the consent of the Minister and Churchwardens and that "before any such burial, agreement must be reached for payment of 3/4d towards repair of the pavement." |
| 1681-82 | Consistory Court Book. Various people ordered to appear before Court for committing acts of fornication, adultery, bearing a bastard child, being illegally married in private houses, etc. If found guilty they were ordered to do penance at church. If they failed to appear they were often ex-communicated. |
| 1852-54 | The old church was
demolished and the present one built at a
cost of £1000. Only parts of the old church remaining are carved altar
rail which was part of the old rood screen
and, possibly, the old font placed beneath the pulpit. Revd. D.H.S. Cranage in his monumental Architectural Account of the Churches of Shropshire characterises the destruction of the old church of Llanfair Waterdine in the SW of the county as "one of the most wicked cases of vandalism I have ever come across." |
| 1870 | A racehorse called The Colonel bred by Hamers at Little Brampton Farm and owned and trained by John Davies of Cwmsannum won the Grand National in 1869 and 1870. In 1870 the horse was led into St Mary's Church for a unique service. In 1869 the horse came in at 50 - 1! |
The
altar rail is the
oldest feature in the church. It is made from
carved oak taken from the old rood screen. The inscription is believed
to be old Welsh dating from 1500. "Sir Mathew and Meyick Pitchgar of
Clun set it up for £10 together."
Mathew ap Jevan was chaplain at St Mary's
1485 - 1500
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Interior
of St
Mary's Church. The pews have the names of local farms written upon them. |
The
organ is a
rarity. It is a barrel organ made in the 1840s by JC
Bishop "organ builder to her Majesty" at South Mary le Bone, London. It
came to Llanfair in 1907 from Bishop's Castle. A handle had to be turned by hand to work the bellows but this was replaced with an electric blower in 1970. Maybe this was just as well as it was said that it was very tiring work to turn the handle thus hymns were rather on the slow side! |
The banner above the altar is that of the late Lord Hunt of Llanfair Waterdine, leader of the first successful ascent of Everest. It depicts a Himalayan Bear with mountains in the background. Until his death in 1998 the banner hung above his seat in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. |