History
Parish church of Oystermouth was first recorded in documents in 1141, when Maurice de Londres granted its revenues to the Benedictine priory at Ewenny. It was likely built on the ruins of a Roman building and a later early medieval church from before the 9th century, mentioned by the Welsh monk Nennius, author of Historia Brittonum. In the 13th or 14th century, it was enlarged with a tower, and in the 15th century, as style of architecture changed, it underwent minor modernization. From 1367 to 1540, it was under the patronage of St. David’s Hospital in Swansea. After that, it passed into private ownership. In the 19th century, due to the growing population of the rapidly expanding town and the poor condition, the church was renovated and extended with a new north aisle. In 1915, the Victorian extension was demolished to make way for an even larger nave and chancel. This work was completed by 1937.
Architecture
The medieval church was built on a slope descending to the sea coast to the northeast. It was bounded to the south by a steeply sloped hill, and to the northwest by another hill, located a little further, on which a castle was built in the 12th century. By the end of the Middle Ages, the church consisted of a spacious rectangular nave, a quadrangular, slightly narrower, and lower chancel on the eastern side, a northern porch and a tower on the western side. A projection may have been located at the eastern end of the nave’s south wall, housing stairs to the loft of the rood screen.
The original entrance to the church was located in the southern wall of the nave, but during the Middle Ages, the northern portal, preceded by a simple porch, began to be used more frequently. The 12th/13th-century windows illuminating the interior were narrow, relatively high, splayed inward, and topped with lancet or semicircular arches. The 14th and 15th centuries saw the introduction of larger pointed windows, capped with trefoils or filled with stone tracery, as well as two-light and three-light windows set in quadrangular jambs. However, the eastern façade remained distinctive with its 13th-century triad of pyramidally arranged, very narrow lancet openings.
The tower was crowned in a manner typical of south Wales, namely with a crenellated parapet supported by corbels projecting from the face of the walls. The tower’s base was framed by a massive batter with sloping facades, topped by a moulded cornice, which encompassed the archivolt of the entrance portal on the west side. Another string cornice separated the upper two storeys of the tower from the lower section. On the south side, a shallow projection housed a staircase lit by five slits. It did not achieve the form of a turret, as it did not reach the height of the parapet of the main part of the tower.
Current state
As a result of twentieth-century construction works, the medieval church is now a southern aisle and chapel (formerly the chancel) of a modern church, overwhelming the historic part of the building with its massive form. The original southern entrance to the church is currently bricked up. A narrow pointed window from the 13th or 14th century remains, followed by a three-light window in a rectangular frame from the 16th century. The chancel’s eastern wall features three narrow lancet windows, originally from the 13th century but renovated in the 19th century. Inside, you can find a 13th-century font and a fragment of a mosaic from the Roman house on which the church was built.
bibliography:
Gregor G., Toft L., The churches and chapels of Gower, Swansea 2007.
Newman J., The buildings of Wales, Glamorgan, London 1995.
Salter M., The old parish churches of Gwent, Glamorgan & Gower, Malvern 2002.