Photographs of Church Street, Abertillery, 12 March 1977

Disgrifiad

These 1977 photographs appear to have been taken on Church Street in Abertillery, with one picture showing the arcade. Included is a picture of the furniture showrooms that were located in a converted church, the Trinity Calvinistic Methodist Chapel.

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_Press_Reports.htm);
"The Hebrew Synagogue – Abertillery" by Graham Bennett (https://outoftheblueartifacts.com/the-hebrew-synagogue-abertillery).

Depository: Gwent Archives.