( the picture is showing up as enormous so just in case it is behind this cut )
This St. Luke's church Abercarn for a lot of my life it was the parish church of Abercarn but as the years went by the congregation dwindled to a point where we could not maintain this huge building and it was de-consecrated .In 1980 the remaining worshipers now share the Welsh Pesbyterian church building I posted yesterday. Some one had the sense to make it a listed building before it was demolished but now time and neglect and outright vandalism is taking it's toll and I fear it won't be long before it just falls down of its own accord.
This shared use of the Welsh Church as it is known locally is not the only connection between the Welsh Church and St. Luke's so sit back put your feet up and read.
In the early years of the 19 the Centuary a young man named Benjamin Hall inherited the Abercarn Estate from his uncle and took up residence in the manor house (Abercarn House)down by the river at Chapel of Ease. In 1823 he married August Waddington and our story begins.
Now Augusta was a very nice lady and was good to her husband's tenants by and lending out her prize ram and bull to improve the tenant farmers stock and upgrading the village bulit for the estate workers by having water piped in to them. She did have a few foibles though.
1. She would only own black animals. Her ram was black, her bull was black, her dogs were black and her horses were black.
2. She was an ardent supporter of the Temperance Movement and no pubs were allowed on lands she and her husband owned. That's why Chapel of Ease has no pub.
3. She firmly believed that no one and no animal should work on a Sunday and since the nearest Anglican Church was 5 miles up hill horses and people would have to work very hard to get there. As a result of this she built a small chapel at the bottom of the hill in Chapel Of ease for her family with services in English and a Church at Abercarn which the Welsh speaking Anglicans of the area could hold services. Both buildings remained the property of The Halls. A decade or so after the church was built the vicar asked permission to hold one service a month in English for the increasing number of outsiders coming to work in the mines and iron works in the valley. The Halls(by then Lord and Lady Llanover)refused and turfed the Anglicans out and the Presbyterians were in. It was 1890 before an other church was built for the Anglicans a corrigated iron building which became the Parish Church of the new Parish of Abercarn. It remained as such until the New St' Luke's was built and consecrated in 1926. The Llanovers will be revolving in their graves, English services being held in their Welsh Church!!
Oh and even those of you in far flung foreign lands will know about Benjamin Hall even though you don't realise in. I'm sure all of you have heard of Big Ben, the bell that strikes the hour from the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament. Sir Benjamin, as he had become, was Clerk of Works during the building's construction and Big Ben was named after him.
Any one wanting to see more of St. Luke's can go here
http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=35494
Where some one far braver than I has been inside and photographed as it is now.
