Barton Where ? Traditional Cache

Barton St David, whats in it's name ?

There are apparently two meanings to the village name, one is below another one is around the area as well.

David is the English approximation of the Welsh Dewi, the name of the patron saint of Wales, to whom our church is dedicated.  Dewi was born in the 520’s in Cardiganshire.  He became a monk and the founder of monasteries of an extremely strict Rule which rested on vigorous manual work throughout the hours of daylight and reading writing and prayer in the evenings. Tradition has it that he went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and was there created bishop.  At Mynyw, Pembrokshire, now St David’s, his principal monastery, he presided as abbot-bishop before his death in 589.

During the course of his career, Dewi had stayed for some time in Glastonbury where, it is said, he was responsible for the addition of a chancel to the church, later called the church of St Mary, which was already an ancient foundation.

In the 7^th Century the Church made permanent provision for the development of monasteries like Glastonbury, as seats of learning and education; for the establishment of cathedrals like Wells, and other minsters and “mother churches” as centres for the spread of the Gospel; for the building of “lesser churches with graveyards” in established villages; and for the conduct of “field churches” for the benefit of communities on lands more recently brought under cultivation.

The memory of the lesser church was often preserved by an annual payment to the mother church.  Barton used to have to pay 16 pence a year to the Abbey of Glastonbury; the money had to be taken every year by twelve men.

St David

In the more settled years after the Conquest, Dewi’s shrine at Mynyw became a much frequented resort of pilgrims.  In recognition of the veneration in which he was held, Dewi was canonised by Pope Calixtus II (1119 – 1124) who ordained that two pilgrimages to St David’s should be accounted equal in efficacy to one pilgrimage to Rome.  In view of the Saint’s association with Glastonbury, it is not surprising that a local church, newly built during the course of the century, should have been dedicated to him or that its churchyard cross should carry a representation of the saint.

The Churchyard Cross

The practice in England of raising a standing cross goes back to the time of Archbishop Theodore (668 – 697) who, by a sentence in his book of canons, enjoined that when a church had been removed to another place, a cross should be erected on the site of the vanished altar.  A century later, where a community was still unprovided with a church building, it had become the custom to raise a cross to mark the place of the daily service of prayer.

There is no way of telling to which of these strands of custom or to what other motive Barton’s cross owes its origin or whether the cross was raised up before or after the existing church was built.  What can be said for certain is that the Christian community of the day thought it right to raise a cross that was truly worthy.

A visitor to Barton in the mid–1800’s found it possible to describe with confidence that the shaft was ornamented with the sculptured figure of a bishop wearing a mitre and habited in canonicles with a maniple on the left arm and, at his left side, a pilgrim’s wallet suspended by a string which passed over the right shoulder; the figure stood on a bracket beneath a weather canopy with crockets and filials.  It was generally agreed, he wrote, that the figure was intended for St David.

The shaft is now so eroded that some of these details are no longer discernable.  The worn and broken steps around the socket in which the shaft is set, were long ago covered by a grassy mound of earth.

In 1986, craftsmen trained in the preservation of stonework, during the restoration of Wells Cathedral, did all that could be done to preserve the cross against further deterioration.