Tomorrow marks a very special moment in the life of St Marys, the large Church situated right in the heart of Swansea. People from all walks of life in the region will come together with The Archbishop of Wales, the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon and Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury to celebrate the church being given Minster status. So the big question is…what’s a Minster?
Planning with Rev Justin Davies, Ian Parsons and Paul Murray
More of that later but first it’s fair to say St Mary’s church hasn’t had the easiest of rides over the years. Some time ago I made a radio programme about the Swansea Blitz. For 3 nights in February 1941 Swansea was targeted by the Luftwaffe in a series of devastating raids. One of the contributors was Elaine Kidwell who during the blitz was possibly the youngest ARP warden in the country. Elaine was convinced that even though the Normans seem to get most of the credit for establishing a church at St Mary’s she believed that there had been a religious community there since Celtic times.
Elaine could well be right. It’s often said ‘The Good News’ first came to this part of the world with the Celtic Saints. In those days it was easier to travel by boat rather than horse and carriage making the Irish Sea, The Celtic Sea and the Bristol Channel the motorways of their day. Saints such as Illtyd, Cattwg, Rhidian, Madoc and Cenydd have churches and holy sites named after them from here to Brittany.
The official history credits the Normans with building the first ‘church’ here maybe as early as sometime in the 1100’s. With the founding of the Hospital of St David in 1332 (part of which can possibly be seen in the Cross Keys pub across the road from St Mary’s) a religious foundation can finally be confirmed at the site.
A new church was built in 1343 and life continued, I’m sure with it’s ups and downs, but mainly in an orderly fashion until getting caught up in the Reformation in the 1500’s and then the Civil War in 1642.
Now it’s easy for us to just think of those as dates we might have heard about in History lessons but for the people of Swansea who worshipped at St Mary’s these were tumultuous times. The Reformation meant that all of the things people had been taught and believed and everything they were used to seeing in St Mary’s changed almost overnight. All of a sudden the King was head of the church not the Pope. The way the church would have been decorated and the statues that might have been placed in strategic places were now denounced as being idols. The priests started wearing different clothes and the services went from Latin to being in Welsh and English. This was not some cerebral theological debate, for the ordinary people of Swansea their world was literally tuned upside down.
It was only a hundred years later that all hell broke loose with the Civil War. The landowners in the area were initially seen to support the King but when Parliament won The Revd Morgan Hopkins of St Mary’s was sacked for his Royalist sympathies. All change again then at St Mary’s until he was reinstated with the Restoration of Charles II. As if that wasn’t bad enough by 1739 the Nave of the church collapsed only to be replaced by a smaller cheaper option that to be honest was a bit of a ‘cowboy’ job.
Over the next decades Swansea became an industrial city and St Mary’s soon ran out of seats for its growing congregation. Extension followed extension until a full reconstruction of St Mary’s finally coming to fruition in the 1890’s. Of course that all changed during the blitz of 1941…
It was chatting to Elaine Kidwell that really brought home to me the scale of the devastation caused by the Swansea Blitz. 230 people killed and 397 injured with the heart of the town razed to the ground. As Elaine said this was our 911.
Elaine loved St Mary’s. She had been christened there and hoped to be married there one day too. As she looked back on that February night in 1941 she saw her beloved church go up in flames, she heard the church bells fall to the ground as the beams that held them finally gave way under the intense heat. I’m sure she would be delighted with the news that tomorrow St Mary’s will become Swansea Minster, The Minster Church of St Mary Swansea with Holy Trinity.
Which brings me back to that question what is a minster? Well let me give you some background, there can only be one Cathedral in a diocese. The Cathedral is a church that houses the Bishop’s throne which in the case of the Diocese of Swansea and Brecon is Brecon. Over the years as Swansea has grown in population and economic importance St Mary’s has taken over the role of being the City Church, the City’s Cathedral in everything but name. Tomorrow’s service will recognise the importance the Church has in the life of Swansea with a new name celebrating some thing that it already stands for in the city.
Now if that was all then it would be a lovely ceremonial moment and maybe nothing more, but the changing of the name is just one part of the story. Tomorrow’s ceremony also marks a major investment by the Church in Wales into the city. Over the next 5 years St Mary’s will receive nearly £3 million to create jobs whilst also safeguarding the church building itself. That means more people working and living in the city breathing life back into the heart of our town.
The service itself looks set to be quite a special event as well. Sir Karl Jenkins has been commissioned to write an Introit for the service and the sermon will be given by one of the finest Theological minds Swansea has ever produced in Dr Rowan Williams. How do I know he is such a spiritual giant? When I was in University and thinking of changing from Economics to Theology I went to meet a young Rowan Williams who at the time was a fellow of my college. After 20 mins of me telling him why I thought I would be qualified for such a change he looked at me over his glasses and said, ‘Mal, it’s not for you’. Expect such spiritual insight tomorrow at the Minster Celebration.