In 1850, a group of worshippers at Wesley Chapel at Pontmorlais severed connections with the chapel and started to worship in the Temperance Hall, and started a new sect, calling themselves the Wesleyan Reformers.
Foremost amongst the new group was Mr Walter Watkins, and he along with Mr W John, Mr Rees Chandler, Mr George Williams and Mr Richard Harris were instrumental in getting the new cause established.
By 1856, with no sign of the rift with their mother church healing, the congregation decided to build their own chapel in Newcastle Street. Shortly after this a number of members left Zoar Chapel and joined the congregation at Salem, and Rev Thomas Jenkins of Aberaman was ordained as the first minister. The congregation were accepted into the Independent Union at a quarterly meeting of the East Glamorgan Association held at Bethesda Chapel. Rev Jenkins remained at the chapel until 1864 when he emigrated to America.
In 1907, the chapel acquired a house in Newcastle Street, and converted it, at a cost of £700, into a schoolroom.
In 1925 when storms severely damaged the old Morlais Chapel, the Salvation Army Corps met at Salem Chapel, and the elders of the chapel offered the building to the Salvation Army. They declined the offer however as the building was deemed too small for their purposes. By this time the congregation had severely dwindled and in 1930 the chapel closed and the remaining congregation returned to Zoar. The building was then sold to the Temperance Movement and renamed Salem Memorial Hall.
The building has since been used by the Jehovah’s Witness movement, but has now been converted to a house.
Youngsters today might be surprised that there was a time, not a million years ago, when Merthyr was a hub of all kinds of entertainment: several cinemas showing a variety of films, plays being performed by both professional and amateur companies at several venues – not to mention live music at several ‘night spots’.
Below is just an example of what was regularly on in Merthyr – all of these adverts appeared in a single issue of the Merthyr Express 70 years ago today, 21 February 1953…
The above is just a small example of what was going on in Merthyr – there was something new happening every week somewhere up and down the borough. How times have changed.
Do you have any memories of going to any of these places? If so, please share any memories with us.
Today marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of one of Merthyr’s greatest writers – J. O. Francis. To mark the occasion, one of his excellent short essays is transcribed below, following a short introduction by Mary Owen who wrote a marvellous biography of him.
John Oswald Francis (J.O.) was born at 15, Mary Street, Twynyrodyn in 1882, and lived later at 41, High Street, next door to Howfields, when his father, a blacksmith, opened a farrier shop in the busy shopping centre. In 1896 he entered the County Intermediate and Technical School on the day of its opening and benefited greatly, like many others, from the education he received there. It formed the grounding for the rest of his life. A blacksmith’s life was not for him. In 1900, he gained a scholarship to University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he graduated with first class honours in English.
He lived for the rest of his life in London, where he was well known as a dramatist, journalist, broadcaster and a popular public speaker. He found fame in 1913 with his play, Change, about ordinary Welsh working-class people and the problems they were facing as changes were taking place in politics, religion and education. It was the first of its kind and gave a new genre to drama, which influenced writers for decades. Although he lived away from Merthyr Tydfil for most of his life, his knowledge of it in his youth inspired him to write about it in the years that followed until his death in 1956. His many short comedies helped to bring about the popularity of amateur dramatics, especially in Glamorgan. He was a pioneer and he became a leading member of the First Welsh National Drama Movement. He was regarded as ‘a distinguished dramatist, ‘a gentle satirist, and ‘always a Merthyr boy’.
Mary Owen
The Railways of Romance
None of us can determine which of the impressions we are always unconsciously receiving is being most deeply written on our minds. What abides is, often enough, that which might least be expected to remain. It is, too, sometimes a little incongruous, as if memory were in part jester, playing tricks with recollection – perhaps in kindness – lest the past should have too grim a visage.
Setting up to be a serious and philosophic person, I must confess to some perplexity over my remembrance of South Wales. There is an interloping thought that persists in creeping into the midst of more exalted memories. I cannot think of the high places of my early destiny – my home, my school, the houses of my more generous relations, and the chapel of my juvenile theology – but that a railway station crowds unasked into the mental scene. In the station of that Town of the Martyr in Glamorgan, an there, no doubt, small boys, stealing away from the harsh realities of the High Street, still snatch a fearful joy upon the trolleys, and staring away past the signal box, weave for themselves the figments of young romance.
Merthyr Railway Station in the early 1900s. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive
The small boy’s zest in railway stations has, I may argue in self-defence, a basis in the deep instincts of humanity. In the old primitive world the barbarian, looking up on the sun, was overwhelmed by a sense of its vast power. He made a god of it, and bowed in reverence. So, also, that unequivocal barbarian, the average small boy, beholds in a railway engine an example of power well within the range of his understanding. It is, perhaps, the same old instinct of adoration that kindles in every healthy youngster his burning desire to be a railway-guard.
Even in this riper stage, when life holds joys more attractive than the right to blow the whistle and to jump authoritatively upon a moving train, I find that a railway station can still exercise a certain lure. To every good Welshman, Paddington and Euston are wondrous places. He may not be one of the happy pilgrims, but it is a pleasure merely to look at carriages that go out under such banners as “Cardiff”, “Fishguard”, “Aberystwyth”, “Dolgelley” or “Barmouth”, and if he is not quite a curmudgeon he can find a vicarious delight in the blessedness of those departing.
But Paddington and Euston have a strenuous air. They do not encourage people to loiter upon trolleys and watch the pageant of the trains. In that station of the Martyr’s Town there was more tolerance. Over Paddington and Euston it had also this other advantage – it did not monotonously receive and despatch the rolling-stock of a single company. Oh, no! It had trains in a variety that I have never since seen equalled. Almost all the lines in Glamorgan gathered to it, just as all paths are said to lead to Rome.
Simply to enumerate the companies that sent their trains to pause under that grimy but catholic roof is to recover something of the rapture of the schoolboy “with shiny morning face”. We had the “Great Western” and the “Taff”; the “London North Western”, the “Rhymney”, and the “Brecon and Merthyr”. I am sorry that, by some kindly roundabout way, the Barry Railway did not run in also. But I am sure that it was then much more than a project.
We small boys of the station-hunting breed knew the different types of engine point by point. We had each of us a favourite. Bitter indeed were our disputes on the question of comparative worth, and devotion went occasionally to the chivalry of fisticuffs. Squeaky voices were raised in partisan abuse. Young eyes shone with the light of a noble championship. (Grown-up people, I have since learnt, land themselves in the law courts for issues less important than those falsetto controversies).
The engine of each company had its own characteristic quality, fully appreciated in our loving study after school hours and in the joyous emancipation of Saturday. The “Great Western” arrived from some vague place called “Swansea” – made after the “local” model, and with its well-known “tick, tick!” rather like a stout lady in a dark-green costume catching her breath after exhausting movement. To many of us the “Taff” was the most impressive of them all. I daresay that on a general suffrage, with a secret ballot to nullify the influence of some of our brawnier members, the “Taff” would have been voted the finest thing that ever went on wheels. How big and burly was the “Taff” engine as it swung past the signal box! How cheerfully it whistled, and how inevitably did it suggest a robust representation of John Bull!
Often did we wonder what would happen if it failed to stop before it reached the buffers. About our expectant platform hung the legend of a day when an engine had crashed right through and gone in mad career almost to the door of the Temperance Hall without. But not for us were such catastrophes! They were the story of an older era, a reminiscence of giants before the flood.
An old print showing the terrible accident mentioned above at Merthyr Station on 16 May 1874
Below is an example of some the varied entertainment that was available in Merthyr in years gone by. All of these adverts appeared in the Merthyr Express 70 years ago today.
Today marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Stephens, the famous historian and social reformer who although not born here, spent the majority of his life in Merthyr. To mark the occasion, I have been given permission to use this article which appears in the Dictionary of National Biography.
Thomas Stephens was born on 21 April 1821 at Tan-y-gyrchen (also known as Tŷ-to-cam, i.e. the house with the crooked roof), in Pontneddfechan, Glamorganshire, the son of Evan Stephens, a well-known boot-maker, and his wife Rachel, the daughter of William Williams (Wil y Gweydd, 1778-1834), a weaver and the Unitarian minister of Blaen-gwrach chapel. Among those who influenced Stephens in his youth were Maria Jane Williams and the Quaker Thomas Redwood (author of The Vale of Glamorgan. Scenes and Tales among the Welsh). Having first attended an elementary school ‘located in a barn’ near Cefn Rhigos, Stephens spent about three years at the Unitarian school founded by David Davis (1745-1827), which during his time there was under the care of John Davies, the former minister of Capelygroes in Ceredigion.
In October 1835, Stephens was apprenticed to David Morgan, a Merthyr Tydfil pharmacist, on whose death in 1841 he took over the business at 113 High Street, which remained his main source of income throughout his life. In 1866, Stephens married Margaret Elizabeth Davies, a descendant of a well-known family of Unitarians from Penrheolgerrig (see Morgan Williams, 1808-1883) in Llangollen Parish Church. Her brother Richard conducted most of the business after Stephens suffered a first stroke in 1868.
Thomas Stephens’s main contributions to the shaping of modern Wales are his efforts as a member of Merthyr Tydfil’s middle class to transform it from an industrial village to an urban community endowed with modern civic institutions; his tireless work on modernizing all aspects of Welsh culture, particularly the eisteddfod, education and Welsh orthography; and his pioneering works of scholarship, especially in history.
As a Unitarian, Thomas Stephens believed in the ability of individuals and society to improve their condition through education and by pursuing rational pastimes. All his work is to be viewed against this religious background. He first put his beliefs into practice by co-founding a public library in Merthyr Tydfil in 1846, for which he acted as secretary until his health failed in 1870, organizing and delivering educational lectures. In this, as in other undertakings, he received the support of Lady Charlotte Guest and Sir John Josiah Guest.
Stephens was one of the campaigners for the desperately needed Board of Health in Merthyr Tydfil in the 1850s, took a leading role in the planning of its Temperance Hall, which would provide rational pastimes for the working classes, and campaigned tirelessly for the Incorporation of the town.
The Temperance Hall. Photo courtesy of the Alan George archive.
He acted as an intermediary between iron masters and workers on more than one occasion. In 1853 it was he who chaired a mass meeting of over 3,000 people, called to achieve an end to long strike action. For the widows and children of the men killed at an explosion at the Crawshay Gethin Pit No. 2 in 1862, he instigated a relief fund, and collected and distributed money until the day before he died. He was a close friend of and political campaigner for H. A. Bruce, Lord Aberdare, Liberal MP for Merthyr Tydfil between 1852 and 1868, and served as High Constable of Merthyr in 1858.
Thomas Stephens’s talent and style as a social critic and reformer with a penchant for acerbic prose first showed itself in a series of letters to The Cambrian in 1842-3, in which he harshly criticized the romantic nature of the eisteddfod. In 1847, and reacting to the publication of the Blue Books , he took a leading part in the controversy over voluntaryism versus the acceptance of governmental grants for educational purposes which was acted out in the Monmouthshire Merlin . He was one of the very few who gave voice to the unpopular view that ‘voluntary exertions would be insufficient to provide education for the very large number of children who now remain uneducated’. For this, he was denounced by representatives of Church and Chapel alike as ‘a maniac and a liar’.
The article transcribed below appeared in the Merthyr Times 125 years ago today…
FEEDING THE HUNGRY
A CHRISTMAS APPEAL
The Christmas breakfast to the children attending the Abermorlais Undenominational Ragged School is one of the recognised annual events of Merthyr. This school, as our readers are aware, has been in existence for about seventeen years, and is undoubtedly doing excellent work among the poorer classes of Merthyr children. From four to five hundred little ones from the slums and rookeries of the town attend the school every Sunday afternoon, and the principles of religion are instilled into their young minds by a band of zealous and enthusiastic teachers. The attendance has recently increased, a fact which speaks very highly of the energy and devotion with which the school is conducted.
On Christmas morning it is proposed to give a free breakfast to 500 children at Abermorlais. This, of course, will entail a heavy expenditure, and the friends in charge of the school very respectfully appeal to the public for their generous assistance. Gifts in money or in kind will be gratefully received. The breakfast will consist of tea and coffee, cake, bread and butter, etc. This over, there will be a short service of hymns and recitations, after which fruits and toys will be distributed to the children. It will thus be seen that the requirements of the organisers are many and varied. They want tea and coffee, cake, bread, butter, fruits, and toys. We feel sure their appeal for these things will not be in vain. Those for whom it is not convenient to send gifts in kind will be at liberty to forward money, and the more the merrier. Clothing of any and every description will also he accepted and distributed to the children.
On Sunday evening next, at the Temperance Hall Mission Service, the Abermorlais children will take the musical portion of the proceedings. Here is an opportunity for the Merthyr people to have a look at these children, and see and hear what they are taught to do at the Ragged School. It will give them some idea of the splendid work carried on at Abermorlais Sunday after Sunday all the year round.
In thus appealing to the public for support, it is needless to plead the worthiness of the cause. All will readily admit that it as excellent thing to render Christmas a bright and cheerful day for these little children, whose lives know scarcely aught but grinding poverty, misery, and destitution. The Abermorlais breakfast will be to them an event to be eagerly looked forward to; perhaps it will be the only cheerful breakfast they have had for months; many of the children, without it, would very likely have to spend a breakfastless Christmas Day. To make one day of their little lives happy and pleasant is surely an act of kindness, and the public will doubtless show their sympathy in a practical manner.
All gifts and subscriptions to be forwarded to Mr. John Morgan, Waterloo Chambers, or Mr. W. Williams, Grosvenor Temperance Hotel.
In the start of what I hope to be a new series, I have made a list of five things….places, occasions, feelings etc. in Merthyr that I remember from my childhood (I have mentioned several other memories such as hot chocolate in Ferrari’s Café in Dowlais – undoubtedly the best memory elsewhere).
The strange multicoloured polygonal playing frame in the precinct. Whatever happened to that?
St Tydfil’s Shopping Centre in the 1970s. The climbing frame is towards the top centre.
Queuing as far as Burtons to go and see the first Star Wars film at the Scala (Temperance Hall)…..I was only 8 at the time, and I made my aunty take me to see it six times – I don’t think she ever forgave me.
In connection to the above, collecting the plastic Star Wars figures. I remember buying them from a shop in the High Street called ‘Cards and Gifts’ (or something like that) – if I remember correctly one of the few places you could get them, and then being totally bereft when the building burnt down. My cousin and I would play for hours with the figures, re-arranging all of my parents’ house plants into various jungle ‘scenes’.
Spending hours playing on the old coal-tips in Abercanaid (by this time grass-covered), and being traumatised when the powers that be took them away (not to mention my grandfather’s garden – a fact he bemoaned until his dying day), to build the extension to the Hoover Factory, and new road into Abercanaid.
Being told never to use the subway under the road in Caedraw…..but being daring, and doing it anyway with the other local children, and being scared to death.
Caedraw in the 1970s. The subway can be seen at the bottom of the picture at the end of the bridge.
Now it’s your turn. What do you remember from your childhood?
Let’s try to make this a successful feature – send me an e-mail at merthyr.history@gmail.com and share your five Merthyr-related childhood memories.
Most of us have passed, or even visited the Temperance Hall (or the Scala to those of you who were born after the 1960’s), but how many of you realise that it was in fact Merthyr’s first purposely built public meeting place?
The Temperance Hall was built by the Merthyr Temperance Society as somewhere to provide “instruction and amusement for the masses of the people”. The Temperance Movement began in the 1830’s. At first temperance usually involved a promise not to drink spirits and members continued to consume wine and beer. However, by the 1840s temperance societies began advocating teetotalism. This was a much stronger position as it not only included a pledge to abstain from all alcohol for life but also a promise not to provide it to others.
The Temperance Hall was opened in September 1852 by Henry Bruce, the M.P. for Merthyr. The original building measured approximately 80 foot by 40 foot, with a 12 foot wide platform, with a capacity of between 100 – 150 people.
In 1873, the Hall underwent major enlargement, was said to hold up to 4,000 people. For the next 20 years the Hall was the main theatre in Merthyr, mostly seeing off competition that came and went, from the Drill Hall, the short-lived Park Theatre and the many visiting portable theatres. Performances at the Temperance Hall ranged from musicals like “Les Cloches de Corneville” and the marionette spectacular “Bluebeard”, to performances of plays by Shakespeare and other leading dramatists.
As well these, the Hall was also used to host lectures and also religious and political meetings. One of the most famous of these was the meeting held in 1872 by Rose Mary Crawshay, one of the leaders of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the late 1800’s, which led to a petition for Women’s Suffrage being sent to Westminster.
A picture entitled “Emigration Agent Lecturing at the Temperance Hall” that appeared in The Illustrated London News 6 March 1875
In 1885 the management was controlled by a group of four brothers: Charles, Joseph, George and Harry Poole who continued with the mixed policy, and encouraged local amateur groups to use the premises as their regular base. By the turn of the century, however, the Temperance Hall was gradually becoming a music-hall and variety theatre, with the touring productions of musicals and straight plays tending to go to the Theatre Royal.
Israel Price
By 1914, the Temperance Hall was listed in the Kinematograph Year Book, so it was clearly an early cinema conversion. The manager of the theatre by now was Mr Israel Price, who would become a legendary theatre manager of the South Wales area. From the outbreak of the War until the start of the “talkies” Israel Price provided variety performances and reviews as well as silent films. In 1927 he was able to advertise that the Temperance Hall was “now the only live theatre in the town”.
The Temperance Hall was renovated and re-seated in 1930 and re-opened in August of that year, promoting itself as “Now one of the most comfortable theatres in the provinces”.
In 1939, Israel Price’s son (also called Israel) took over the running of the Temperance Hall, and he also eventually took over the management of the Theatre Royal. The Hall seems to have been used almost exclusively as a cinema during the Second World War, but in the post-war years it resumed live theatre, and in 1948 ran a forty-week repertory season under the direction of Barney Lando.
An advert for the Temperance Hall from the Merthyr Express 5 June 1937
By the 1953 edition of the Kinematograph Year Book the proprietors were listed as Messrs Price and Williams, and there were 624 seats, and by 1980 the Theatre had ceased presenting live shows and was used exclusively as a cinema having been renamed the Scala Cinema. It was owned by Dene Cinema Enterprises Ltd. and had 480 seats.
The cinema closed in the early 1980’s and in 1985 the building was converted into a bar and snooker club.
John Oswald Francis (J.O.) was born at 15, Mary Street, Twynyrodyn in 1882, and lived later at 41, High Street, next door to Howfields, when his father, a blacksmith, opened a farrier shop in the busy shopping centre. In 1896 he entered the County Intermediate and Technical School on the day of its opening and benefited greatly, like many others, from the education he received there. It formed the grounding for the rest of his life. A blacksmith’s life was not for him. In 1900, he gained a scholarship to University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he graduated with first class honours in English. 
Thomas Stephens was born on 21 April 1821 at Tan-y-gyrchen (also known as Tŷ-to-cam, i.e. the house with the crooked roof), in Pontneddfechan, Glamorganshire, the son of Evan Stephens, a well-known boot-maker, and his wife Rachel, the daughter of William Williams (Wil y Gweydd, 1778-1834), a weaver and the Unitarian minister of Blaen-gwrach chapel. Among those who influenced Stephens in his youth were Maria Jane Williams and the Quaker Thomas Redwood (author of The Vale of Glamorgan. Scenes and Tales among the Welsh). Having first attended an elementary school ‘located in a barn’ near Cefn Rhigos, Stephens spent about three years at the Unitarian school founded by David Davis (1745-1827), which during his time there was under the care of John Davies, the former minister of Capelygroes in Ceredigion.
