Tour of St Mary's. ( I keep Finding Amazing Churches!)

Hi everyone, so this is St Mary's and as the title suggests I just keep on finding amazing churches and that is one of the great things about living here in Wales. I've been making these videos for about four months now on YouTube and for some of you who've watched me from the start hopefully you are seeing a slow improvement each video. My drone footage is definitely getting better, I'm starting to know how to use that thing now and I'm trying to slow things down a little bit and yeah let me know in the comments if you if you can see an improvement. So a little bit of history about this church, it was first made in the 13th century and it was rebuilt in 1875. The church is now owned and looked after by the Friends of Friendless Churches which is a charity that I just discovered and if it wasn't for them this church would be no longer here. Back in 1982 it was declared unsafe and then it was redundant and I think the Friends took over in 1989 and they put a new roof on and restored it and inside is really nice condition so well done to them, they've done a fantastic job here. Back in 1956 St. Mary's was designated with a grade one listed status so I find it really strange that just 30 years later they were going to pull the building down. What's the pointing list in a building, especially a grade one if it wasn't protected from the moment they did that. Now when I visited the church the porch was open but the main building was actually locked but there's a telephone number that's inside the porch you can ring and it explains where the keys kept and it's only like half a mile down the road in the farm it's very easy to get to so if you do come and visit you know don't be shy ring up the number and you can get inside the church and I'll add some background music again so you can enjoy the inside of the church so I've come back outside now and the the graveyard is quite a big one and there's plenty of really nice gravestones here and some quite unusual ones too. Also here in the graveyard there's two really big yew trees and you know I love yew trees so we'll have a little look now. I actually didn't really see this one I came looking for these gravestones and I peered through and then I saw this massive yew inside so my initial reaction was wow what a beauty. As usual I just turned up at this church without looking at any of the history of it or anything about the graveyard at all. I always like to find you know interesting churches I can go to but come here with an open mind and find out things for the first time so yeah this tree was sort of hidden away and it's a really big one. Now I've just noticed in previous videos I keep saying the diameter of the yew what I mean by that is the girth you know it's not quite the right word so in my book this is supposed to have a 9 meter girth now I think it's bigger than that it looks to me at least you know 10, 10 and a half meters around but like I didn't bring any rope to measure it myself I just think that maybe the book isn't quite right because once you come to these churches like every week and you keep seeing these trees you can kind of guesstimate yourself and when you see trees like this size 9 or 10 meters around you know you're seeing a tree that's around the 2,000 year old mark it also looks like someone has been cutting these branches off. Now we are in farmer territory so I'd imagine it's farmers from the distant past who may be trying to be good and cut the tree back but that's not a good thing for these yews that they're supposed to these branches are supposed to go back into the ground it makes it stronger there's a really nice church cross here and it's believed to be from the medieval times it's really hard to find you know history and dates on these monuments you know looking on the internet there's hardly anything there must have been books they're probably very old books out there that's got pictures and history I'd love to get my hands on some of them now just check out how beautiful the stonework here is of Jesus it's you know absolutely stunning and this is why I'm into them going around the churches because I'm not religious I actually I really dislike religion but I just I love the architecture I love the history and you know I know what the the secret meanings are behind the whole church and Jesus and this is what I'm interested in it for really these gravestones are quite unusual but they're so chunky they're probably like eight or ten inches thick really nice ones made to last so over this side we have a war grave here and some other really interesting graves and the other you now this is another female tree like the other one and in my book it says it's the same size as the other one but it's not this is definitely a bit smaller a really nice one though and again it looks like mr. farmer has been cutting these branches off and I don't mean to be rude because that's probably done years ago but like if you're in a position where you're looking after the graveyards and especially these you trees please look into how you're supposed to care for these trees you're not really supposed to touch them leave them to do their own thing and if anyone disagrees with me just please take a minute to read this little bit by the experts themselves in actual fact no you tree can be considered dead even remains of an old trunk several thousand years old can come back to life again and this is one of the connections between the use and Jesus Christ here's a little section and these are all gravestones for the crochet family which is the family that owned the Kfarfa castle and all the ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil so they're very similar you know this gravestone here is quite modern but it's in the same style as the other ones interestingly enough these gravestones will face in a different way than the rest of the gravestones here now you should be facing east where the altar is and they're not quite that way so only they will know why they've done that but they will be the reason for it I'm gonna leave you now with a bit more drone footage I hope you enjoyed the video and I look forward to doing another one soon