Maes yr Onnen

Visit to Maes -yr – Onnen, Glasbury.

Some twenty members and friends made the pleasant journey to Maes-yr –Onnen chapel near Glasbury in Powys on Saturday the 20th of October. The building ,which is a converted farm building has been a place of worship for nonconformists in Wales since 1695, making it the oldest building of its kind.

Mr Phylip Jones gave a detailed talk on the origin of the building and how it had come to be used in the days when nonconformity was persecuted following the Restoration. Meetings were controlled and numbers restricted which meant that licences were taken out on farm building, inns and individual houses. The members were then given time to peruse the chapel which included an invaluable time line of its various minisers since 1695. The chapel is still in use by the United Reformed Church and even on a pleasant autumn day, one was reminded how cold such buildings can become and it was easy to empathise with the worshippers of some three hundred years ago since the only modern intrusion was electric light.

There were some links to Resolfen, since Maes-yr-Onnen is very similar in style to Melincwrt Chapel which is some century younger, notably the pulpit is central to the chapel. Melincwrt also had a minister at one point who had started his ministry in Maesyr Onnen, followed by a stint at Llansantffraid ym Mechain and latterly at Soar in Neath, the mother church of Melincwrt.

The visit ended with a very pleasant afternoon visiting the second hand bookshops of Y Gelli Ganddryll ( Hay on Wye).

( Photographs of visit to follow)