Parish Pages - Gwenddwr and Crickadarn Independent Chapels

Introduction to the records

This register contains entries from Beiliheulog Chapel, Gwenddwr (right), and Hebron Chapel in Crickadarn village. Beiliheulog Chapel has its origins in the seventeenth century when dissenters’ meetings were held secretly in remote places. These meetings led to the chapel being built in 1790 near Beiliheulog farm, high in the hills above Gwenddwr village. The congregation grew quickly to 150 members by 1712, but by the nineteenth century membership had waned. A daughter chapel, later called Hebron, was built in Crickadarn village in 1812. As it was more accessible, Hebron became more important than the mother chapel. Both chapels were still in use in the early twenty-first century but had become different denominations.

Above: Late 19th century maps showing location of the Congregational (Independent) chapels at Beiliheulog (left) and Crickadarn (right) 

The BLFHS Transcription Group recorded the data from digitised images of the register surrendered to the General Record Office when civil registration began in 1837. The entries are written in a published register for dissenting congregations but the writers ignored its format. The amount of information in the entries varies; none gives the place of baptism, whether at Beiliheulog, Crickadarn or at the parents’ home.

For an illustrated history of the chapels see the Welldigger blog.

Our Transcriptions
The register has been transcribed as seen, except that:

• Surnames are capitalised to aid searching
• Dates have been standardised to a simple form
• Abbreviated names have always been expanded e.g.W[illia]m, Tho[ma]s

Spelling mistakes and variants of names e.g. Lydai, Havart have been retained.

Spreadsheets

• Information has been extracted and transferred to columns
• In recording the registration of a child with unmarried parents the surnames of both parents, if known, are given in the child’s surname column
• An extra Notes column has been added to the spreadsheet for any extra information provided by the minister, or to give an explanation for the user
• The first column of the spreadsheet gives the page number of the register
• The final spreadsheet column (shaded pink) gives the identification number of the scanned image from which our transcribers worked.

Transcribers' Marks

• Anything enclosed in square brackets has been added by a transcriber
• [?] indicates that part of a word (more than two letters) or number was illegible
• [] indicates that one letter or numeral could not be deciphered
• A word or number enclosed in square brackets means that the word or number is obvious from the context
• A word or number enclosed in square brackets with a question mark indicates an educated guess
• A note or explanations added by a transcriber are enclosed in square brackets
• [n/e] shows that the original document has no entry for that column

 
View the Transcriptions

To access the transcriptions click on the link in the right hand column.