Croeso/Welcome to Welsh Chapels & Churches

A website of photographs of Welsh Temples of Devotion

This website presents some of the photographs that I have collected in the course of my family history research, along with many others provided by friends and visitors to this site, to whom I owe my sincere thanks. The pictures are arranged within the drop down menus within pages which are mostly arranged alphabetically by place name.

There is now a very helpful index to this website compiled by Gareth Hicks, on his Genuki Wales site. Please see Links or Site Detail menus for the Genuki Chapels link. I am most grateful to Gareth.

It is a depressing sight to see so many of these chapels, once almost heaving with people singing praises to the Lord, falling into disuse and deterioration. These are the buildings where once our ancestors prayed, married, and baptised their children. Here were the places of learning, evening classes, and Sunday Schools. Here prizes were given out and Sunday School outings and trips arranged.

Sadly many of these chapels are very large and cannot easily be converted into homes, as they have in some areas. Conversion of large chapels into Community Centres such as that of Soar, Penygraig, Rhondda is something to be applauded, but obviously there can be only one community centre in a village/township. Our ancestors could not have conceived that these large buildings that they raised money for, would one day, all too soon, be of little value and become burdensome on their communities.

If you have any church or chapel photos which are not shown, and owned by you or earlier ones of those converted or demolished institutions, I will be very happy to have copies of these to include in this website. Please note that at present I cannot take any images of buildings in Swansea, Bridgend or Rhondda.

Jill Muir