St Mary's Church, Kingswood
We will forever be grateful to this church and its custodians for the knowledge they gave us and the act they were kind enough to show us around both the church and the abbey gatehouse. What was supposed to be a flyby visit ended up being an educational tour with a recommendation (to Tintern Abbey) and we now hold this place, and it's slightly leaky roof, in our hearts. Now St Mary's is actually quite a rare church, and this is because it was one of the few churches that were built during the reign of George I. When the Big Bully King dissolved the monasteries, specifically Kingswood in 1539, the people here continued to worship in the Lady Chapel. However, by 1719 it had become unsafe and as the community had a right to worship, a new church was required. St Mary's was commissioned and built in 1723 allowing for an unbroken thread of worship that was able to last for almost 1,000 years. This site is rather special as some of the graves here are an...
