Photographs of the area where the Abertillery synagogue was located, 12 March 1977

Description

These photographs were taken around the area where the Abertillery synagogue was once located. The synagogue was built in 1910 behind a terraced Newall Street house that belonged to a successful furniture dealer called Harry Simons. This would explain the somewhat cryptic note on the JCR-UK website according to which the premises of the Abertillery Hebrew Congregation later became a furniture depository. Services are believed to have ended towards the end of the 1940s. According to the Abertillery-based collector and amateur historian Graham George Bennett, the synagogue formed the first floor of a two-story house. The building was in the Gothic style and had a school room on the ground floor. It was big enough to accommodate one hundred worshippers and one hundred pupils.

According to our research, these photographs depict views down Newall and Blythe Streets, towards the river. Also included are two photographs of a building at 56 Powell Street that has since been demolished and two almost identical photographs of an unidentified street.

A Hebrew Congregation was founded in Abertillery by the early 1900s but had ceased to exist in the 1950s. The Jewish Chronicle records in 1905 that a Rev S. Kahn had been elected Chazan, Shochet, and Teacher of Abertillery congregation. He was soon succeeded by others, including Rev Snadow who moved on to Newport in 1910. By 1939, the Abertillery community had shrunk from around 100 members to 14. The Jewish Chronicle reports that in 1942 religious services for evacuee children were held in a private home in High Street.

Sources:

'The History of the Jewish Diaspora in Wales' by Cai Parry-Jones http://e.bangor.ac.uk/4987);
https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/Community/val1_abertillery/Abertillery_Press_Reports.htm; https://outoftheblueartifacts.com/the-hebrew-synagogue-abertillery. Depository: Gwent Archives.