Redwick, Newport

Infobox Newport parish
Parish = Redwick
Population = 194 (2001 census [ [http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView.do?a=3&b=801805&c=redwick&d=16&e=15&g=421554&i=1001x1003x1004&o=1&m=0&enc=1&dsFamilyId=779 Office for National Statistics Parish Headcounts: Redwick] ] )
Council = Redwick
GridReference = ST421841
Constituency = Newport East
PostCode = NP26 3
DiallingCode = +44-1633
Magor exchange

Redwick is a small village and community parish to the south east of the city of Newport, in South Wales, United Kingdom.

Location

Redwick is located six miles south east of the city of Newport and some four miles south west of Caldicot on the flat coastal lands reclaimed from the Severn estuary and Bristol Channel and part of the Caldicot and Wentloog Levels.

The Church

The ancient church of St. Thomas the Apostle [http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/69915] is notable for many unusual features. It is unusually large [http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/583085] for a parish church on the Caldicot and Wentloog Levels, perhaps second only in its grandeur to that at Peterstone. The church has a full-immersion baptisty, unique medieval stone carvings and a fine Victorian pipe organ salvaged from two previous churches. On the ancient south porch is a distinctive 'scratch post' or "Mass sundial" and (like the church at nearby Goldcliff) has a mark indicating the flood level of the water inundation caused by the Bristol Channel flood, 1607. The handsome font originates from the 13th century and may have been an original feature. In the ancient peal of bells, the fourth and fifth are pre-reformation bells from the Bristol foundry, dated circa 1380 [ [http://dove.cccbr.org.uk/detail.php?numPerPage=10&searchCountry=Wales&searchDiocese=Monmouth&searchAmount=%3D&searchMetric=cwt&Submit=++Go++&sortBy=Place&sortDir=Asc&page=4&DoveID=REDWICK Dove's Guide: Redwick] ] making them some of the oldest church bells working anywhere in the country. Most unusually, following their lowering in the tower in the 1990s, the bells are rung from the chancel in full view of the congregation, although a number of old unused rope bosses suggest that this must have also been the case at some time in the past. The fine East window, which contains some painted glass from about 1870, unlike the roof and the other windows, escaped the near-by German Luftwaffe bomb blast of 1942. The restoration and re-modelling on the church, including the attractive raised tiled floor, in 1875, was by John Norton who later also participated in the building of the exquisite chapel at Tyntesfield in Somerset.

Amenities

The village pub is the Rose Inn [http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/352276] .

Whithall Farm/Redbrick House

The earliest Church records show that there has been a house on the site since 1450, then called Whitehall Farm.

The main Georgian façade was built around 1795, by MP William Phillips. Phillips, built the Brick House ready for his son's return to Britain from the American Colonies. However the son (also named William) never returned, as the ship carrying him home was wrecked in a storm before reaching Britain and William was drowned [ [http://www.a1tourism.com/uk/brickh.html Brick House Country Guest House history] ] .

The house is now a guest house.

Archaeology

Insects from samples of Bronze Age timber buildings on the foreshore at Redwick have been examined by Smith and colleagues [ [http://www.arch-ant.bham.ac.uk/research/Environment/gwent.htm Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, University of Birmingham] ] . Four rectangular buildings of middle Bronze Age datehave also been excavated on intertidal peat at Redwick - such buildingsappear to have been used during seasonal pastoral activity on the wetland. [ [http://www.archaeologists.net/modules/icontent/inPages/docs/ta/ta59.pdf The Archaeologist Winter 2006}] ] . Martin Bell and colleagues from the University of Reading have studied Mesolithic to Neolithic coastal environmental change at Redwick [ [http://www.reading.ac.uk/SHESresearch/AllGroups/PublicationDetails.asp?grp=ASRG University of Reading Archeological Science (Geoarchaeology & Bioarchaeology)] ] .

References