OVER 300 years of history ended earlier this month, when a Powys church, believed to be one of the oldest of its kind in Wales, held its last-ever service.
The final service at Rhayader’s Tabernacle Chapel United Reform Church (URC) was delivered on Sunday, September 20, to a congregation of three people.
The church building, on Bridge Street, has welcomed worshippers for 305 years. Mike Bennett has been attending the Tabernacle for 81 of his 86 years, holding multiple roles, including five at the time it closed.
“I have been coming here since I was five years old, so I have found this, the closure, difficult,” said Mike.
“I cut the grass, I’m the general secretary, pulpit supply secretary, organist and, since Dawn Jones died suddenly in July, I took on her role of treasurer too.
“So, that's another job that's come on me. I just feel I can't carry on. Sadly, things like this are happening which is behind the closure.”
Mike’s wife Joyce is still a member, and has cleaned the church for the last 50 years, but ill health has curtailed her attendances. With another member also suffering ill health, Mike is the sole worshipper.
“I'm 86. I can't expect to go much longer,” he lamented.
“And, quite honestly, with the work now, the safeguarding and different things, I can't.”
Mike has had to attend Zoom meetings online with the Wales URC hierarchy, in Cardiff, and had to explain that Joyce’s health prevents him from travelling.
“They’ve told me, ‘Oh, send someone else’, but there isn't anyone else,” he said.
“We're spending money on lighting, heating, insurance, and you think, is it worth it? And this building, it isn't what it's all about. Churches are all about the people in them.”
The building dates back to 1721, although the church began in a farmhouse, called Neuaddlwyd, in the parish of Nantmel, in 1688.
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John Hanmer is believed to have founded it, with “a bit of a shack” then built just below the police station in Rhayader, on top of the old police cells, because “there were so many people wanting to go” to church.
Mr Hanmer then decided a permanent building was required and the Tabernacle opened in 1721.
By the mid-1830s, records indicate that Rhayader averaged a congregation of 400.
During Mike’s time the congregation peaked at 50 to 60, when he was around 20.
“We always seemed to have the treasurer as the bank manager of Barclays Bank,” he recalls.
“One succeeded the other, it was amazing. Those were the halcyon days, but they’re long gone.
“The congregation has since dwindled significantly. If you drew a graph it would be going down and down.”
The Tabernacle’s Sunday school was paid for by the Birmingham Corporation Water Department, which oversaw the development of the Elan Valley, where Mike worked for 35 years.
It also donated an ornate wooden chair, still used today, which King Edward VII sat on when the dams were officially opened in 1904.
Bringing Christianity to Korea
Rhayader was, in 1839, the birthplace of Robert Jermain Thomas, whose father Robert Senior was minister at the Tabernacle.
Robert Junior became a missionary who, today, is remembered for bringing Christianity to Korea – although on his second visit there, in 1866, he was killed by angry civilians, after jumping to shore when his ship, the SS General Sherman, caught fire.
As he came ashore, Thomas reportedly distributed Bibles to those present, offering them even to the men who would ultimately kill him.
The Robert Jermain Thomas Memorial Church was later established in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
“Each year a party from that church visit Tabernacle and hold a service to commemorate his life and give thanks to what they regard as the sister church,” said Mike.
“A party from the Korean church visited Rhayader earlier this year and I was told that their membership is over 2,000 people.”
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