History
St. Mary’s Church was built in the early 13th century, after a new port was establish, from which the settlement took its name. It may have been built thanks to the support of the Anglo-Norman lord William FitzMartin or his son of the same name, who held the lands of the Cemais lordship at the time. As the “ecclesia de Novo Burgo”, the church was first recorded in Taxatio Ecclesiastica of 1291, where its income was valued at £8. In 1326, the patronage of the church in Newport had an annual value of 12 marks and was part of the knightly fees attributed to James d’Audely, a relative and liegeman of William FitzMartin.
St. Mary’s Church was first rebuilt at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. Then, in the 14th or 15th century, side chapels were added to the nave, and at the end of the 15th century or at the beginning of the 16th century, a tower was built, similar in form to the tower of the church in Nevern. The building in this form at the end of the Middle Ages, during the office of the rector William Davies, was valued at 16 pounds of annual income (“Ecclesia ibidem ex presentacione ejusdem domini de Awdeley unde Willielmus Davis clericus est rector valet cum gleba communibus annis £16”).
In the early modern period, the church was renovated in the years 1834-1835. However, it quickly fell into poor condition, which necessitated further construction works. Unfortunately, the extensive Victorian renovation of 1879 contributed to the removal or obliteration of many medieval architectural details, as the repairs did not pay much attention to the original windows or the inner arcades. A new porch was also built on the site of the older one. An annex for coal was probably added at the beginning of the 20th century.
Architecture
The church was built on the north-eastern side of the castle, on a slope descending towards the wide mouth of the Nevern River and the sea. At the end of the Middle Ages it had a fairly extensive spatial layout. Its core was a strongly elongated, rectangular nave and a rectangular, shorter, but of the same width chancel, traditionally situated on the eastern side. From the north and south in the 14th or 15th century, chapels or arms of a wide transept were added to the nave. Both were created as two-bay buildings, originally with gable roofs placed parallel to the church axis. The entrance to the church from the north was preceded by a porch in an unknown period of the Middle Ages.
At the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, a quadrangular tower was added to the nave on the western side, situated slightly asymmetrically, with a deviation from the longitudinal axis of the church. Its walls in the western corners were reinforced with high stepped buttresses, one of which had a niche topped with an ogee arch and a console decorated with a mask. The base of the tower was enclosed by a slight batter with a cornice. In the south-eastern corner of the tower, a turret with a spiral staircase was placed. It provided communication between the floors and at the same time acted as a buttress. Since it was one storey higher than the tower, it could also have served for watch and for observation. In the north-eastern corner, its counterpart supporting the wall was a pilaster. Both the turret and the tower itself were topped with a parapet, originally crowned with battlements.
The interior of the nave was connected with the chencel by an arcade, probably with a pointed archivolt. At least since the late Middle Ages, however, the two parts of the church were separated by a rood screen, which formed a boundary for the lay inhabitants of the settlement in front of the presbytery part of the church. The rood screen housed an upper loft, accessible by stairs set in the thickness of the wall projecting in the angle between the chancel and the northern chapel. The side chapels were opened onto the nave with two-bay arcades, and the porch in the ground floor of the tower was opened with a single arcade. The latter was placed under a relieving arch. Probably none of the parts of the church were vaulted in the Middle Ages, not even the ground floor of the tower.
Current state
The church was enlarged as a result of early modern construction works, by a northern porch, probably built on the site of the medieval one, as well as a northern brick annex for coal. Moreover, the southern wall of the nave was largely rebuilt, while the northern chapel and southern wall of the chancel were rebuilt or at least refaced. The windows of the church were also replaced during renovation works in the second half of the 19th century. The greatest amount of historic substance and details survived in the walls of the tower, where the late Gothic entrance portal and 16th-century openings are visible. Inside the church, modifications affected among others the chancel arcade and the arcades between the nave and chapels, which were replaced, not to mention the roof truss, floors and elevations. On the northern side of the chancel arcade, you can see a medieval console in the form of a mascaron, probably moved from another place. By the arcade under the tower, there is a 14th-century stoup. Among the medieval furnishings, a font from the 12th century has been preserved.
bibliography:
Barker T.W., Green F., Pembrokeshire Parsons, „West Wales historical records”, 3/1913.
Ludlow N., North Pembrokeshire Churches, Llandeilo 2000.
Salter M., The old parish churches of South-West Wales, Malvern 2003.
The Royal Commission on The Ancient and Historical Monuments and Constructions in Wales and Monmouthshire. An Inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire, VII County of Pembroke, London 1925.