Photographs of a Jewish home in Pontypridd, 1978

Description

Two photographs of a house with blue front doors. A mezuzah at the top right-hand corner of the door frame indicates that someone Jewish must have lived there at some point. According to David Jacobs, who took the photograph, the house was on Wood Road in Pontypridd (Wood Road continues into Cliff Terrace where the Pontypridd synagogue was), however, it has now been confirmed as being 50 Rickard Street, Graig, Pontypridd.

A synagogue was first founded in Pontypridd in 1867, when a school room was converted into a place of worship, but the Jewish community dates back to at least the 1840s. Although the membership of the congregation remained small, the congregation established their own section in the Glyntaff Cemetery in the 1890s and built a synagogue in Treforest in 1895. The congregation was dissolved in 1978 and the Wood Road synagogue was sold and converted to flats.

Sources:

'The History of the Jewish Diaspora in Wales' by Cai Parry-Jones (http://e.bangor.ac.uk/4987);
JCR-UK/JewishGen (https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/community/val1_tredegar/index.htm).

Depository: Glamorgan Archives.