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St Andrews Major
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.jpg) St Andrews Major church | |
  St Andrews Major Location within theVale of Glamorgan | |
| OS grid reference | ST139715 |
| Principal area | |
| Preserved county | |
| Country | Wales |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Postcode district | CF |
| Police | South Wales |
| Fire | South Wales |
| Ambulance | Welsh |
| UK Parliament | |
| Senedd Cymru – Welsh Parliament | |
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St Andrews Major (Welsh:Saint Andras) is a village andparish in the community ofDinas Powys in theVale of Glamorgan, betweenBarry andCardiff in south-easternWales.
The village has achurch which is over 600 years old and a primary school. Back in the early 19th century the house just past the church used to be acoaching inn, but the local Lord of the Manor had it closed down as all his farm labourers were spending their wages in there and not getting any work done (according to local history). The property is now a private residence and the village no longer has a pub.
Garnhill House (and Estate), occupying the north of the hamlet, is a Grade II listed building[1] with terraced gardens exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1904,[2] and has been occupied by the Green family for hundreds of years, expanding the Estate piecemeal.Other notable houses include The Rectory and St Andrew's House. In 1801 the village had a population of 420[3] and 474 in 1833[4] although now it is simply a smallhamlet with fewer than 150 residents.
The surrounding soil of the parish is a strong, brown, dry earth, well adapted for grain of all kinds. The substratum of the whole islimestone. The ground is rather elevated and hilly towards the northern, side of the parish (Garnhill Estate), and flat and level towards the southern side. It is sometimes subject to partialinundation from the overflowing of a small stream, calledDinas Powis brook, which runs through the south-eastern part of the parish towards the south, and empties itself into theBristol Channel, between the parishes ofCadoxton andSully, which lie between St Andrews and the channel.
The nearby St Andrews Quarry has provided limestone for roadbuilding and gravel and also the windows of St Peter's Church at Dinas Powys.[5]
The church is dedicated toSaint Andrew, and is in the Benefice of St Andrews Major and Michaelston-le-Pit. At the east end of the north aisle, parallel with the chancel, is a private chapel, anciently the property and burial-place of a respectable family, named Rowel, long since extinct, and the Bouville family who were owners of a great part of the parish. In the floor of this chapel there is a stone bearing an inscription of the tombs of a couple who had both lived extremely long lives:
Here lyeth the body of John Gibbon James, buried the 14 of August, 1601. And Margaret Mathew, his wife, buried the 8 of January, 1631. He aged ninety-nine, she aged one hundred and twenty-four.
John Wesley is reputed to have preached from the pulpit.
The Rectory, behind the church, was built in 1830 and its gardens used for village celebrations and events. It was built to replaceThe Old Rectory, (or Old Parsonage) which dates from the 15th century and still exists behind the later building.[6]
Media related toSt. Andrews Major at Wikimedia Commons
