All Saints Church: A Brief History

08 Mar 1983
The church of All Saints Oystermouth is an amalgam of the very old and the comparatively new. The church is first mentioned in the records in 1141. But there may well have been a church in the area before the Anglo-Normans established their castle in the twelfth century.

St Illtud (c.AD 475-c525) used Ystumllwynarth (Oystermouth) as a quiet place of retreat from his busy monastery of Llantwit Major and built a chapel there. Old folk in the 1800s recalled a tradition of there being a chapel on the cliff at Knab Rock and quarrymen were later to cut through its cemetery.

The earliest surviving part of the present church consists of the Lady Chapel, the south aisle and the western tower and constituted the medieval parish church which was built in the thirteenth century on the site of a Roman building. It served the needs of the parishioners until the mid-nineteenth century.