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Aberdare Boys’ Grammar School

History

Old School

Chapels hired by the School

These buildings were used at various times during the school’s history for Carol Services and teaching

Gadlys Chapel, Trecynon

Gadlys Chapel 2005

Gadlys Chapel (Welsh Baptist), Railway Street at the top of Tudor Terrace, Trecynon. Photographed in 2005, eleven years after it had been converted into residential flats.

Gadlys Chapel, Trecynon

Gadlys Chapel watercolour

Gadlys Chapel water-colour sketch* by F Morris, 1894

Bethel Chapel, Trecynon

Bethel

This was Bethel (Welsh Congregational) in August 2003. Three months later it was demolished; in its place now stands a new detached house. Just next to the corrugated iron garage there is a gateway. It was through here that we entered to reach the vestry/schoolroom at the rear. It was used for assemblies and music lessons in the 1960s. Leading off from the vestry was a staircase to a first floor set of rooms where Marie Howells held her lessons for stringed instrument players.

Carmel Chapel, Trecynon

Carmel Chapel Trecynon

This is a picture* of Carmel (Calvinistic Methodist) Chapel in Hirwaun Road. It was situated almost exactly opposite and to the rear of the Gym and Physics Laboratory. It was the first of the C.M. chapels in Aberdare. This rebuilt structure was completed in 1896 (a year after the school was built), by the builder J. Morgan - almost certainly the same man who built School House. The chapel was demolished in 1989 and in its place now stands a brand new building called The Brethren Meeting Room. In 1988, the Carmel congregation moved from the building to Siloh, Trecynon where they shared the chapel with the Congregationalists until 1996 when the cause at Carmel came to an end.

Past student Elfed Davies (ABGS 1940–1946) has written an account of the history of this chapel. It is entitled Carmel Trecynon, Eglwys Bresbyteraidd Cymru (1799–1996).


*These two photographs reproduced with permission of Rhondda Cynon Tâf Library Service