TONYPANDY METHODIST CENTRAL HALL

The Methodist Central Hall dominated the lower end of Tonypandy for over sixty years from its opening in 1923 until its eventual demolition in 1985. Methodist Central Halls were designed to meet not only the spiritual needs of the population but also to serve as social and educational centres for the communities they served.

The Glamorgan Free Press and Rhondda Leader newspaper of Friday June 29th 1923 describes the opening of the new hall, which it calls, ‘The Most Beautiful Hall in Wales’. It describes how the Hall built by Messrs. Laing and Sons, at a cost of £30,000, and designed by architect Mr. Arthur Brocklehurst was formally opened by Lady Nicholas of ‘The Garth’, Trealaw accompanied by her husband Sir Walter Nicholas. Huge crowds attended the event so much so that, ‘The street was dense with people when the opening ceremony was performed, traffic for the time having to be suspended’.

The Rev.J.E. Wakerley the President of the Wesleyan ‘connexion’, performed the dedicatory service, and a great public meeting was held in the main hall of the building presided over by Mr. Joseph Rank of Hull, donor of £10,000 to the building fund.

Prior to the establishment of the Central Hall the Methodist cause already had a long history in the area. It began in a large room over ‘Y Siop Fawr’ in Dinas and later moved to Penygraig, where services and Sunday School were held in the Long Room of the White Hart Hotel. Then in 1866 a plot of land was secured from Gellifaelog Farm in Tonypandy upon which the first chapel on the site was built. This chapel was small and could cater for only eighty worshippers and thus was soon shown to be inadequate for the needs of the local Methodists. Thus a new, enlarged chapel was erected on the site in 1873, which itself was enlarged in 1899 and in which a gallery was erected in 1910. This chapel was in turn demolished in 1922 to make way for the new Central Hall, which took a year to build. During this time the worshippers held services at Judges Hall as well as the vestries of Seion and Ebenezer Chapels, additionally prayer meetings were held in the front bedroom of the caretaker’s house.

The Central Wesleyan Hall, as it was originally known, consisted of a main hall capable of seating 1,000 people, a choir platform that accommodated 100 choristers, and a lesser hall with a capacity for 400 people. It also boasted a ‘primary department’ with accommodation for 150 children and five or six classrooms, as well as a games room with two billiard tables, a library and a place for reading and writing.
As stated in the Central Hall’s twenty-fifth anniversary booklet , ‘ Within a few short years [after the completion of the building] the valley was in a grip of a depression that crippled its life’, during this troubled time the Hall, under the leadership of the Rev.R.J.Barker and later the Rev.C.E.Gwyther, ‘Stood as a light in the dark’. It became a ‘centre of mutual service’ for the unemployed with woodworking and bootmaking workshops, reading rooms a printing press and a milk bar, also thousands of toys were made for distribution to local children, clothing was distributed and the canteen began to serve ‘twopenny meals’. The Hall also served a valuable function as a rest centre for evacuees during the Second World War.

In common with many Rhondda Chapels the Hall faced a serious decline in the latter half of the twentieth century with dwindling congregations eventually forcing it to close in 1980. As the Rhondda Leader of Friday June 6th 1980 reported, ‘ Final Hymn sung at Central Hall…Another Rhondda Chapel closed its doors last week.’ As a spokesman for the Hall at the time stated, ‘Up until the last ten years it was also a leading influence in the community until…a combination of industrial decline and decreasing interest in religion led to a dwindling membership’. The remaining eighty strong congregation transferred to other Methodist chapels. Mr. George Thomas, Speaker of The House of Commons, later Viscount Tonypandy, a former member and Trustee of the Hall attended the final service. In 1985 the Hall, which had been left derelict and vandalised for some five years, was eventually demolished to make way for a new supermarket.