Penydarren High Street – The Melting Pot

The New Inn: ‘Mormon’ meeting place

by Freda Entwistle

The New Inn, Penydarren, was located at no. 307 High Street, but was demolished in the late 1970s for modernisation.

It was a typical public house: the ground floor providing an entrance to the pub itself; living accommodation for the family of the licensee at the rear of the building; and the floor above provided a sizeable hall, which was hired out for various events and activities to local groups.

One of those groups was the Latter Day Saints or ‘Mormons’ – officially members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In the early 1840s William Henshaw, a new convert to the cause, was sent to Merthyr Tydfil, to preach the gospel.

In the History of the Church, Joseph Smith recorded:

Sunday, February 19, 1843 —– Elder William Henshaw having been directed… to go to South Wales, he commenced preaching in the English language privately to several families in Pen y darren, near Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorganshire. A number of the people believed his testimony, and this day he baptized William Rees Davis, his wife, and two of his sons, and commenced preaching publicly in Brother Davis’s house, about one-third of the people only understanding the English language.

The Davies’ home soon proved too small for the growing membership. It became necessary to look for premises to accommodate the growing membership and inquiring minds from the public. The New Inn provided such a meeting place. Penydarren thus became the first branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Glamorgan, established on 25 March 1843. The branch grew to a membership of 50 by the end of 1843.

Several other branches were established in the Merthyr area in the ensuing years, often meeting in public houses such as the New Inn. There is evidence of the Penydarren branch still in existence in the 1851 Religious Census, which confirms the New Inn as one of the meeting places the Latter-day Saints used for their services.

William Rees Davies was later assigned to the Rhymney area and became branch president there before he, his wife Rachel and their children emigrated with the first large company of Welsh converts in 1849.

Another early member of the Penydarren LDS branch was Abel Evans (left). Born in Carmarthenshire, he moved to Merthyr where he was baptised by William Henshaw, 10 February 1844, and became a stalwart member of the Penydarren branch. His six years of devoted missionary service throughout Wales brought many other converts into the Church.

Fluent in Welsh, he was often called upon to translate sermons given in English by visiting church authorities, for the benefit of those who only spoke and understood Welsh. In 1850 he emigrated to the Great Salt Lake Valley in Utah Territory, but in 1865 he returned to Wales as a missionary. Sadly he died here in November 1866, and is buried in the cemetery at Cefn Coed.

Names of the first converts baptised into the Penydarren branch, as recorded by Edward G. Roberts

Merthyr’s Chapels: Horeb Chapel, Penydarren

Horeb Welsh Independent Chapel, Penydarren

The cause at Horeb was begun in 1837 by Rev Joshua Thomas, the minister of Adulam Chapel in Merthyr. Rev Thomas started a school in a room adjoining the Lucania Billiard Room in Penydarren, and several members of Adulam, who were living in Dowlais, met Rev Thomas in the school and started holding prayer meetings there. The congregation grew to an extent that it was decided to build a new chapel, just a few yards away from Joshua Thomas’ school. The foundation stone was laid on 1 August 1839, and the chapel, the first place of worship in Penydarren, was completed the following year at a cost of £700. The original chapel was built in an elevated position overlooking the High Street.

The original Horeb Chapel. Photo courtesy of Carl Llewellyn.

For the first few years, Horeb was in a joint ministry with Adulam with the Rev Joshua Thomas ministering to both chapels. However when Rev Thomas left Merthyr in 1843, the elders of the chapel decided to call their own minister, and Rev Evan Morgan was ordained on March 26-27 1844. Sadly Rev Morgan was a victim of the cholera epidemic and died in June 1849, and he, his wife and one of his children were buried on the same day.

As a result of the cholera epidemic, there was a religious revival in Wales with many people joining chapels and churches. The congregation at Horeb continued to grow and in 1853, a new chapel was built at a cost of £1100. The new chapel was built with the main entrance now facing Horeb Street. Within three years a new schoolroom was also built next to the chapel at a cost of £400.

The second Horeb Chapel. Photo courtesy of Carl Llewellyn.

In 1891, the fabric of the building was in need of some attention, so the chapel underwent minor renovations and a new pulpit and ‘Big Seat’ were erected at a cost of £330.

By 1908, it had become obvious that the chapel was becoming quite dilapidated and really not adequate for the congregation, so a new chapel was built in 1908/09 at a cost of £3,900, including £400 for a grand pipe organ.

The interior of the chapel was finished to a very high standard with magnificent plasterwork, and the gallery and pulpit made from a mixture of oak, pitch pine, mahogany and ebony. The new chapel was considered to be one of the finest chapels in South Wales.

On the night of 28 April 1973, an arsonist started a fire in the chapel, and the building was gutted. Only the vestry adjoining the chapel was saved, and also the iron name plate which was cast in the Dowlais Ironworks.

Horeb Chapel in ruins after the arson attack in 1973.

Following the fire the chapel had to be demolished and the decision was made to build a new chapel. A new modern chapel was built at a cost of £60,000. Horeb is now the only place of worship in Penydarren.

The Morlais Brook – part 2

by Clive Thomas

From here in pre-industrial times the brook continued in its efforts to cut deeply into the country rock, passing Cae Racca, the fields of the Hafod Farm and down into Cwm Rhyd y bedd. Unfortunately with the construction of the new Ivor Works in 1839, this area became the tipping ground of the thousands of tons of waste produced by the furnaces, forges and rolling mills. Over the next century the whole form of the land became radically altered with tip and railway embankment obscuring its course. It eventually emerged into ‘The Cwm’, as a poor remnant of its former self, passing in the mid-nineteenth century the Dowlais Old Brewery and Gellifaelog House on its way down to Gellifaelog Bridge. This had been built in the second half of the eighteenth century to carry the Abernant to Rhyd-y-blew turnpike Road and would eventually become the location which every local would know as ‘The Bont’.

The Nant Morlais flowing through ‘The Cwm’ in the 1940s. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive.

A map showing the Nant Morlais passing through the Bont and showing Gellifaelog House and Gellifaelog Bridge

A little below here, it had its junction with Nant Dowlais on the banks of which the first Dowlais furnace had been constructed in 1759. Two centuries later, in the 1960’s with the building of the Heads of the Valleys Road and the general landscaping of the 1980’s the stream’s way through the ‘Cwm’ was again changed quite comprehensively, although shrub and tree planting rendered the valley more aesthetically pleasing. Unfortunately, it is only the archive map or faint ancient photographs which now help inform us of its rich and varied history.

Site of confluence of the Morlais and Dowlais Brooks. The old turnpike road went to the left, crossing the Morlais at Gellifaelog Bridge. The New Road was originally one of the railway inclines of the Dowlais Works. Photo Clive Thomas

Before being confined to its anonymous, culverted bed, the brook’s surface course from The Bont was once again encroached upon by massive tipping from the Dowlais Ironworks. On the opposite bank, once the fields of Gellifaelog and Gwaunfarren Farms, what was to become Penydarren High Street would be established. This ribbon development of dwellings, shops and places of worship was constructed above the steep valley side here and would eventually form a fundamental link between the growing settlements of Merthyr Tydfil and Dowlais. As early as 1811 though, I.G. Wood’ s print of the Penydarren Ironworks shows our mountain cataract to be already much altered, confined and despoiled by the growth of that iron manufactory. Today, the location is completely transformed from the area of desolation we knew in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. It is landscaped, green and partly wooded but it is a great pity the planners could not have given it a more inspirational name than Newlands Park.

The Morlais Brook flowing behind Penydarren High Street in the 1940s. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

Below the site of the works its course altered a little again and helped define that spur of high ground the Romans had chosen, probably in the early second century AD as the site for one of their forts. I am sure these ancient invaders would have had no inkling of the iniquities that men of later centuries would perpetrate on the stream and landscape hereabouts. Today, Nant Morlais reveals itself only briefly to the rear of the Theatre Royal and Trevithick memorial before disappearing at Pontmorlais, the location of another of those early turnpike bridges.

An 1851 map showing the course of the Morlais Brook through Pontmorlais

The Morlais Brook at Pontmorlais in the 1940s. Wesley Chapel is in the background. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

Hidden behind the buildings of the town’s Upper High Street there is one final reminder of the stream’s rural and unsullied past. Mill Lane, more recently the rather secret location of Mr. Fred Bray’s sweet factory, is the site of a water mill where our agricultural forefathers ground the corn grown in the fields of the local farms.

A map from the 1860s showing the old mill.

Whilst the old buildings and general dereliction which not so long ago framed the stream’s last few hundred metres have long disappeared and been replaced by car parking and civic buildings, a large portion of Abermorlais Tip remains to mark the point where the waters of Nant Morlais coalesce with those of the parent Taf. Although partly confined to a subterranean existence, through the more recent efforts of Man, ‘The Stinky’ has been able to rid itself of the foul and fetid mantle of its past.

Where it all ends. The confluence of the Morlais with the Taf. Photo Clive Thomas

Commercial Break

Merthyr’s Chapels: Radcliffe Hall, Penydarren

The next chapel we are going to look at is Radcliffe Hall Forward Movement Methodist Chapel in Penydarren.

In 1901, members of Hermon and Libanus Chapels in Dowlais started meeting in Penydarren Boys School, and started a Sunday School in the long room of The New Inn, Penydarren.

By 1902 numbers had grown sufficiently for the congregation to build their own chapel. Three cottages were purchased at a cost of £550, and converted into a meeting place which they called Samaria.

On 28 December 1903 Rev E R Jones of Machynlleth was inducted as the new minister. With the advent of the new minister the congregation flourished and it became obvious that a new place of worship was needed. A new building designed by Messrs Habbershon & Faulkner of Cardiff was built by Mr Samuel Evans of Dowlais at a cost of £2,344.

At the stone laying ceremony on 15 December 1904, Mr W Henry Radcliffe the owner of an important shipping company in Cardiff, and a prominent member of the Forward Movement contributed £100 pounds to the building fund. Radcliffe was born in Dowlais and had lived for a time near the site of the new Chapel. In recognition of his generosity it was decided that the new chapel would be called Radcliffe Hall.

On 3 September 1908 the elders of the chapel decided that the cause should become an English cause, and as a result, on 25 October 1908 Rev E R Jones gave his last sermon and announced his resignation due to a combination of ill health and not being happy with the change to an English cause.

During the spring of 1913, the congregation at Radcliffe Hall faced a dispute with the owners of a new cinema which planned to be built next door to the chapel. A committee was set up to oppose the scheme, and every other chapel in Penydarren rallied to support Radcliffe Hall. Due to the public support for the chapel, the committee won their case and the cinema, The Cosy, was eventually built further along the High Street.

Radcliffe Hall closed in 1964 and the building was destroyed by fire in 1976.

Radcliffe Hall in flames in 1976. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

Merthyr: Then and Now

PENYDARREN HIGH STREET

For the latest in our series, we have three photographs showing somewhere that has altered beyond all recognition – Penydarren High Street.

At one time Penydarren High Street was lined by houses and shops; a chapel – Radcliffe Hall; a cinema – the Cosy, not to mention several pubs. Penydarren High Street was also the site of The Lucania where Eddie Thomas had his gym.

The first photograph shows the High Street in about 1910.

Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

The next photograph taken just slightly further up the High Street is from 1972.

In this photograph you can see that the houses are still standing, if a little more weather-worn than previously, and Radcliffe Hall Chapel is at the bottom of the photo on the left hand side.

The last photo is from 2012 – nothing remains. That’s progress for you!!!