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Hidden Histories, episode three
The Royal Commission's Head of Survey and Investigation, Stephen Hughes, met Huw Edwards at Capel Als in Llanelli, to discuss the social history represented by this great chapel.
The Royal Commission's national chapels survey found that some 7,000 chapel buildings once existed in Wales. Of the people who were counted in the religious census of 1851, 80 per cent were nonconformists and by 1905 4,280 chapels were operating. Many were rebuilt several times.
Capel Als in Llanelli was started in 1780 and enlarged twice in the next fifty years. It was then rebuilt to the designs of Thomas Thomas in 1852-3 and again in 1894-5. Capel Als was a working-class church whose membership was entirely Welsh-speaking.
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