With a commanding
view of Barry Island and the Bristol Channel, St Nicholas Church has stood for
hundreds of years. It would have been a familiar sight and a landmark to the
mariners' of old. St Nicholas was the parish church for the medieval and
post-medieval village of Barry and no doubt contains the mortal remains of many
of its villagers. What you see now though is a Victorian copy of the original
as the medieval church was destroyed in 1874.
(Facing east from the mainland, this early nineteenth
century painting conveys something of the rural character of the area
before development)
The medieval church
was smaller than the present church but occupied roughly the same ground. The
name of this church is derived from the patron saint of sailors', St Nicholas,
and certainly named so because of the local harbour. The medieval church was Norman
in origin and was around 14 meters in length by 5.9 meters and encompassed a
chancel and nave. The windows had iron grilles and internal shutters and it is
possibly that the roof was thatched at some point.
(Multi-phase plan depicting the
medieval church, the Victorian church, church boundary and the priest's
house.)
During the fifteenth
century the church underwent a number of changes. The roof was by this point
glazed with Cornish slate and the chancel was rebuilt owing to subsidence and a
Perpendicular door was erected. It seems that the church of St Nicholas also
benefited from a fifteenth century innovation, the rood screen. It has been
discovered from recovered fragments of interior plaster that the church would
have been decorated with wall paintings - these were whitewashed over during
the Reformation.
(St Nicholas church as it stands today)
Like
many church yards in times gone by, they were more than simply a place of
death. On the contrary they were full of life as they were frequently used for
a variety of purposes. Post medieval evidence of coins, buckles and ale jugs at
St Nicholas attests to this. During excavations in 1983 a priests house came to
light. It originally stood on the east-side of the church entrance.
The
church is no longer used for worship and is presently used by a local scout
group.
