Iron Church

St Matthew, Abernant

                      




Corrugated iron first patented in 1829 soon became the material of choice for prefabricated buildings throughout Britain and the Empire. By the 1850's specialist companies produced catalogues advertising a wide range of buildings for use in farming, mining, railway and manufacturing  industries as well as residential cottages, village halls, boat houses, billiard rooms and churches and chapels.

Corrugated iron buildings provide us with a reminder of the  speed of the industrial revolution, with fluid labour markets willing to travel to find work, causing massive social change. As a result settlements near the new industrial centres needed buidlings that could be quickly and cheaply erected. Buildings like this church would have been delivered to the nearest railway station and erected using relatively unskilled labour.

This church, from 1888, was built around a timber frame and lined with timber tongue and groove boards for the walls and ceiling. It cost £254 to build. The only indicator from the outside that this is a religious building is the use of  arched lights in the upper part of the wooden windows on the side walls.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/making_history/making_history_20061205.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_tabernacle#Examples_in_Wales

Also Jones, A.V (2012) Churches of the Cynon Valley  Dinefwr Press