These photographs depict the Merthyr Tydfil Jewish Burial Ground, which was founded in the 1860s. The Ohel seen in one of the pictures was probably built in the 1890s and now contains plaques taken from the closed Merthyr Synagogue.

Merthyr Tydfil was once home to one of the largest Jewish communities of the South Wales Valleys. The first Jews are believed to have arrived there in the 1820s and the first purpose-built synagogue was erected either in the late 1840s or the early 1850s. The thriving community soon outgrew the premises and a new synagogue opened on Church Street in 1877. From the 1920s to the mid-1930s, the Merthyr Tydfil Hebrew Congregation had up to 400 members, but with rapid changes in the economic conditions and the exodus that followed, the membership dropped to 175 by 1937. Services were held in Merthyr until the late 1970s.

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/merth/index.htm):
International Jewish Cemetery Project (http://www.iajgsjewishcemeteryproject.org/wales/merthyr.html):
Cemetery Scribes (http://www.cemeteryscribes.com/showmap.php?cemeteryID=39).

Depository: Glamorgan Archives.