Kensington Baptist Church, Brecon

PWMP logobutton_lang_welshKensington Baptist Church, Brecon

This site has a long tradition of Baptist worship. Services in English were provided here, while Welsh-language services were held in the nearby Watergate chapel.

The first chapel, built here in the 1820s, was eventually outgrown by the congregation and Sunday School classes. In 1879 the foundation stone of a new chapel and schoolroom was laid by John Evans, of Mount View, Brecon, and Richard Cory. Mr Cory (1830-1914) was a Cardiff shipping magnate who generously supported the Baptist cause.

The chapel and adjoining hall were demolished in 2011 after subsidence caused structural defects. The replacement buildings replicate the general shape of their predecessors and are a venue for community groups and activities.

A brass plaque inside commemorates four men who died in the First World War, including the chapel’s organist, Melville George Trew. He joined the South Wales Borderers in 1916 and was later transferred to the Lancashire Fusiliers. He was killed in action in Belgium on 18 September 1917, aged 36. He had worked in Cardiff before returning to Brecon to work in the butcher’s business of his father Thomas Edward Trew, a local magistrate. He lived with his parents in Ship Street and played the piano as accompanist for the Brecon Choral Society and others.

His brother Edwin Charles Trew was awarded the Military Medal in March 1918 for rescuing a wounded soldier from no-man’s land while under machine-gun fire. Aged 42, he was fatally wounded by a shell in France five months later.

David Stanley Davies was educated at Brecon County School and emigrated to New Zealand. He joined the New Zealand Forces and was killed in France on 12 February 1917, aged 26.

John Sydney Letton, of The Watton, was a carriage painter before the war. He fought in Egypt and died of heart failure near Cairo on 2 October 1916, aged 26.

With thanks to Steve Morris of Breconshire Local & Family History Society

Postcode: LD3 9AY     View Location Map

Website of Kensington Baptist Church

To continue the Brecon in WW1 tour, walk up The Avenue and take the first right. Follow Castle Square, then Postern to its far end. Walk up Priory Hill to the Cathedral
Brecon war memorial  Tour Label Navigation previous buttonNavigation next button