Welsh Journals

St. Nicholas, Nicholaston Church. G.G. church, and made from a solid block of stalagmite: the font in St George's church, Reynoldston, is made of the same material. The hanging pulpit (as opposed to one attached to the floor) is decorated with three alabaster figures, carved by William Clarke of Llandaff. The figures are of Keble, Pusey and Liddon, all High Churchmen prominent in the Oxford Move- ment. In the cornice (the projecting upper portion) of the chancel, angels play on a variety of musical instruments, while the reredos (the decorated screen behind the altar) is in pink alabaster with red and green Irish marble shafts. The steps to the altar are of red Numidian marble, the colours symbolising the earth (black), the blood of sacrifice (red), and purity (white), while the altar stands on a podium of pure white marble. The sanctuary (the east part of the chancel) is paved with polished Devon marble. Interestingly two prominent nonconformists have memorials dating from before the church's restoration. Attached to the west wall is the grave- stone of the Swansea banker and draper John Voss (1763-1818), a friend of the Barham family and one of the signatories to the document prescribing the aims of Lady Barham's chapel in Penclawdd.4 His epitaph reads "He was a genuine Christian, through life and in death he depended for salvation only on the merits of an all sufficient Saviour." Buried in the churchyard is his son William Voss (1797-1862), a lifelong supporter of the Revd William Griffiths,5 in whose house in Nicholaston the first meetings of Gower's Calvinistic Methodist society were held, as recorded on the brass plaque in the pulpit of Burry Green chapel. A tablet on the north wall of Nicholaston church states: "To the Glory