These photographs of Abertillery were taken in 1977. Two of them depict a view of the town from a distance while one portrays a building on Castle Street that has hosted a Masonic lodge and the Abertillery RFC. More recently, it has been a pub and a community support centre. The fourth picture depicts the Newall Street Methodist Chapel that was demolished in the 2000s and was also once used as Masonic lodge.

Information on the Jewish community in Abertillery is conflicting, but it is known that a Hebrew Congregation was founded in the early 1900s and ceased to exist in the 1950s. According to the research of Abertillery historian Graham Bennett, a synagogue with a Hebrew school was erected in 1910 on Newall Street and it had space for 100 worshippers and 100 pupils In Cai Parry-Jones’s doctoral dissertation this account is disputed, and the synagogue is said to have been a room in a residential building. Contemporary newspaper sources confirm that weddings and events took place at the Abertillery Synagogue, but they also note that in the early 1940s, religious services for evacuee children were held in a private home. At the time, the Abertillery community had shrunk from around 100 members to 14.

Sources:
'The History of the Jewish Diaspora in Wales' by Cai Parry-Jones (http://e.bangor.ac.uk/4987);
JCR-UK/JewishGen (https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/Community/val1_abertillery/Abertillery…);
"The Hebrew Synagogue – Abertillery" by Graham Bennett (https://outoftheblueartifacts.com/the-hebrew-synagogue-abertillery).

Depository: Gwent Archives.