St Mary's Vicars Timeline

When St Mary’s was first built in the early C12th, the church was inextricably linked to the Baliols who built the town and castle of Barnard Castle: its first priest seems to have been a member of the family! Bernard Baliol I granted the church of Barnard Castle (amongst others) to St Mary’s Abbey in York, and the Abbey continued as patrons of the living, appointing its vicars and curates, until it was ‘dissolved’ during the reign of Henry VIII. The church then passed to the newly-founded Trinity College, Cambridge, which today still holds the patronage of St Mary’s Barnard Castle and appoints its vicar.

Until 1866 those serving as ministers at St Mary’s were variously called:

• ‘presbyter’ [priest] or ‘vicar’ (of both Gainford and Barnard Castle – St Mary’s Barnard Castle was the daughter church of St Mary’s Gainford)
• ‘chaplain’ [of St Mary’s Barnard Castle, since it was referred to as a ‘chapel’ in its earliest years].

Confusingly, there were also chaplains who were solely attached to the chantries (small altars) inside St Mary’s – the chantries of Our Lady/Blessed Virgin Mary, the Trinity Guild, and St Katherine.

• ‘clerk’ (which is related to the word ‘cleric’)
• ‘curate’ [a junior priest to the Vicar of Gainford and assigned solely to the “cure” or ‘care’ of Barnard Castle]. Post-1865, any ‘curates’ at Barnard Castle were newly-ordained, junior colleagues to the vicar of St Mary’s.