Tag: Sion Chapel (Abercanaid)

Merthyr’s Chapels: Saron Chapel, Troedyrhiw

Saron Welsh Independent Chapel, Troedyrhiw

Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

In 1820 a Sunday School was started in Troedyrhiw and held in various houses. In 1822 Mr & Mrs Robert Davies moved to the area and opened their house to the Sunday School. Mr Davies was a member of Pontmorlais Chapel, and Mrs Davies a member of Bethesda, Merthyr, so the school was jointly run by the Methodists and Independents. Within a few years the Sunday School moved to the house of Mr W Morgan, and became wholly run by the Independents.

Due to the success of the Sunday School it was decided to build a chapel. In 1833 a piece of land was bought from Sir  Josiah John Guest, and a chapel was built at a cost of £409.5s.11d. The chapel opened on 10 February 1835.

For the first few years of its existence, Saron was still considered to be a branch of Bethesda Chapel, and the services were taken by Rev Methusalem Jones of Bethesda. When Rev Jones died, the link between Saron and Bethesda was broken and Saron became an independent church, and Rev David Thomas was ordained as Saron’s first minister on 19 November 1840.

Rev Thomas proved very successful, and under his leadership the congregation grew steadily. Sadly, however, his health began to decline and Rev Thomas died on 6 October 1843. The following year Rev William Morgan was inducted as Saron’s second minister. He would eventually serve as the minister at Saron for 32 years.

Under Rev Morgan the congregation flourished, and it soon became obvious that the chapel was too small for the ever growing congregation. It was decided that a new chapel was required, but they were denied land for it by Sir John Guest. However, they came to realise that Mr Wyndham Lewis was the true owner of the land, and he pledged land in his will with enough land for a graveyard. A new chapel was built at a cost of £700. In 1886 the vestry hall seating 250 was built at the rear of the chapel.

The interior of Saron in the early 1900s. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive.

During Rev Morgan’s ministry, a few members from Saron started a Sunday School in Abercanaid. Such was the success of this venture that it was decided to build a chapel there which became Sion Chapel.

Although suffering from asthma, Rev William Morgan (left) served as the minister at Saron for 32 years until his death on 31 January 1876 at the age of 64. Such was the esteem and affection in which he was held, that the deacons of the chapel wrote to the Home Secretary for special permission to bury Rev Morgan under the pulpit of the chapel.

Saron closed in 1983 and was finally demolished in 1990.

In 2009, a group of volunteers from Troedyrhiw set up a group to rescue the graveyard of Saron Chapel. The graveyard is quite extensive; in March 1879, the Merthyr Burial Board had reported that there were 433 graves in the graveyard with room for 1299 interments. There had already been 1125 burials so there was room for a further 174.

The graveyard was in a terrible condition due to almost 30 years of neglect, and was a blot on the village of Troedyrhiw. The group, which called itself ‘Friends of Saron’, produced draft proposals to turn the dilapidated and overgrown graveyard into a community asset by creating a low maintenance Memorial and Wildlife Garden.

A Year in Patagonia – part 1

This account, donated by Thomas Gwynder Davies, was written by his grandmother, Martha Thomas (née Protheroe) about the year she lived in Chubut, Patagonia. She was born in Abercanaid 1878. Her family were members of Sion Chapel, Abercanaid, and they emigrated to Patagonia in 1887, but returned to Abercanaid in 1888.

One year of my life written by an 8 to 9 year old
Martha Thomas (née Protheroe)
1887 to 1888
in Patagonia, South America

My father and mother often wished to travel. They talked much about it and when father was offered a government job in 1887, to build a railway from Chubut Valley to the Andes Mountain, they decided to accept it. The government wanted £5 from each settler as a guarantee that they would stay until the railway was finished. There was much preparation to be made and although I did not understand much of what it involved, I was very excited. Mother was presented with a Bible from the members of Sion Chapel Abercanaid, and I was presented with a large book on behalf of the scholars of Abercanaid mixed school by Mr Evans, schoolmaster.

I felt the parting very much especially from my dear Grandfather whom I loved very much. He lived next door and we had never been parted before. Well the morning for going away arrived at last. Father and Mother my two younger sisters and uncle and two aunts from Swansea came with us to Liverpool to see us off. We stayed there two days and went to many places of interest. We visited the museum and had our photos taken on the steps outside and when we boarded the ship for Patagonia we again had to part with loved ones and friends who had come to wish us well in our new home and surroundings and a safe journey. It took six weeks to go on our journey.

One morning mother looked very tired and sad and thanked God that we had slept through the night, as there had been a terrible storm in the night, and every passenger and crew had worked very hard, as the implements that the ship was taking as cargo in the bottom of the ship had got loose, and they had to put sand bags between the irons to steady the ship as it rolled so, at the mercy of the storm. At last we reached our Chubut. We were taken in little boats to the landing stage. We still had a long way to reach the village, so were taken in wagons drawn by oxen. We did not travel very fast in those days, and had to sleep in the open three nights, and the men had to light fires to keep the wild beasts away while we slept. By and by we reached the Chubut village where a large tent was put up with long tables and benches where we had tea of bread and treacle, and a beverage called Valka made out of a native tree which we sucked through a straw.

We soon settled when father had a 4 roomed homestead built of mud and straw. Evan Hopkins who came with us from Abercanaid was a carpenter and he made us a table and benches for our kitchen and we had mats made by the Indians of animals skins and dyed with vegetables that grew on the Andes. We had two dogs – ‘During’ a house dog, and pet called ‘Fancy’, two hens and cockerel. Father now  had two horses to take him to work as he worked a very long way from home and only came home at weekends. When he went back to work he rode the one horse until it became tired and picked up the other to ride the rest of the way, so he would have it to ride half the way home next weekend – the first horse having eventually returning to us by itself. My sisters and I would go for long rides as it was quite docile.

The weather was very extreme. When it rained it tore up the earth into holes, and they would soon fill with water, but in a few days it would be quite dry again. When it snowed it came down in great lumps not like our flakes. When there was a thunder storm the lighting was like a huge picture in t he clouds. As the grass grew, the wind and the sand caused it to burn and became yellow. There was little green grass to be seen anywhere, therefore there was no pasture for the cattle to eat and they were very thin. There was very little butter in the shop as the farmers could only make a little in the summer when the grass was at its best.

To be continued in the next post……

 

Merthyr Memories: An Abercanaid Childhood

by Ken Brewer

I was born in 1937, so my memories begin during the War when I was about 3 years old, and I started school. I clearly remember carrying a cardboard box that contained my gas-mask, and during school lessons the bell would go, and we were all ushered into the yard and instructed to lie lay on our stomachs in case there was an air raid. The classes in those days numbered about 40 pupils due to the influx of evacuees, so the teachers were very busy.

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

Abercanaid itself was very self-supporting, meeting the needs of the people who lived there. There were two bakers, a butcher and three grocery shops, plus a number of small corner shops. There was also an official ‘layer-out’ for the village, and when we saw the elderly lady in question hurrying along with her little bag, you knew someone had passed away.

What went on in the village, mostly centred around the church and the chapels. St Peter’s was the church, and the chapels were: Sion Independent Chapel, Deml Baptist Chapel and ‘my chapel’ Graig Methodist Chapel. The members of these chapels and church would regularly stage concerts and amateur dramatic performances to entertain the villagers. For the children there was ‘Band of Hope’ and ‘Rechabites’ so we rarely left the village. As children, we didn’t have chance of misbehaving – everyone knew everyone so any misdemeanours would soon reach our parents.

As in most places, the pubs outnumbered the chapels. In Abercanaid we had The Colliers Arms, The Richards Arms, The Glamorgan Arms, The Llwyn-yr-Eos Inn, the Duffryn Arms (also known as the Teapot), and in Upper Abercanaid – The White Hart.

The Llwyn-yr-Eos Inn. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

We also had our own Police Station, Library, football ground – The Ramblers, and a Social Centre on the Canal Bank which was built by the villagers themselves. Abercanaid was also served by two Railway Stations – Pentrebach Station on the Merthyr to Cardiff line, and Abercanaid Station on the old Rhymney Line.

Ladies exercise class in the Abercanaid Social Centre in the 1940’s.

If anyone wanted to know where someone lived, you could tell that person, not just the street, but the exact house. Neighbours were so important, and everyone was ready to help in an emergency. During the war everything was in short supply, floor coverings consisted of home-made rag mats or coconut matting. My family were considered posh because we had some carpet mats! The items were actually hand-me-downs; my mother had worked for Price Brothers, the bakers and wholesale merchants in Merthyr, for over 25 years, so when their carpets were beginning to wear, they replaced them, and the old ones were given to my mother. Many times I came home from school to find the carpets missing from the front room – when I asked about them I was always told that “Mrs So-and-so has visitors so she has borrowed the carpets”.

Another incident I recall occurred one Sunday lunchtime. The meat was cooked, and the vegetables were ready, and my grandmother (who lived with us) was making the gravy. There was a knock at the door, and a close neighbour stood there in tears, distraught because her brother and three children had turned up from Cardiff and she didn’t have enough meat to give them for lunch. The result was that she had our meat and we managed on vegetables and gravy! I wonder if such a thing would happen today?

Things were undoubtedly hard at that time in Abercanaid, as elsewhere, but I’m sure the wonderful community in our village helped us to cope a lot better with the deprivations and stresses of the time.