St. Joseph's Church is a Roman Catholic Church in Belmont Road in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales.
St. Joseph's is served out of St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church in Brecon. The parish priest for both parishes is Fr. Jimmy Sebastian Pulickakunnel MCBS, a member of the religious order of the Missionary Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament.
Monsignor Canon Clyde Hughes Johnson, now retired, still helps in St. Joseph's Parish and has done so for decades.
St. Joseph's R.C. Parish - Hay-on-Wye There are two regular masses, Sunday at 9am and Thursday at 10am. The weekly newsletter contains details about social and liturgical events including the Sacrament of Reconciliation, Exposition, and Holy day masses.
Parishioners play an active part in the life of the parish. The Parish Advisory Council (PAC) includes parishioners with responsibilities for safeguarding, finances, gardening, maintenance and repair.
Lay ministries include altar serving, catechist (including RCIA), reader, eucharistic minister, liturgical animation and hospitality. Periodic activities include preparation of bidding prayers, church and altar linen cleaning, and flower arranging.
The site on Belmont Rd was used as a Methodist chapel for about 130 years. It was purchased in 1967 and adapted for use as a Roman Catholic church.
Roman Catholic Province of Cardiff-Menevia, Wrexham and Herefordshire Geographically, the province covers all of Wales and the county of Herefordshire in England. Administratively, the province consists of the Diocese of Wrexham and the Archdiocese of Cardiff-Menevia (which includes Herefordshire). The archdiocese was created in 2024 by merging the Archdiocese of Cardiff and the Diocese of Menevia.
The new archdiocese is subdivided into seven deaneries. St. Joseph's (Hay-on-Wye) and St. Michael's (Brecon) are in the St. John Lloyd Deanery. Other churches in the deanery include Cathedral, St. David's/Danygraig, Townhill, Sketty, Gendros/Landore, Dunvant, Mumbles, Morriston Port Talbot/Cwmavon, Margam, Sandfields, Briton Ferry, and Neath/Glyneath.
The Roman Catholic Church in Wales is a full member of Cytûn: Churches Together in Wales an ecumenical group of churches in Wales.
Location Hay-on-Wye is a medieval town on the border of England and Wales in the area known as the Welsh Marches.
Due to Richard Booth, the town is widely known as the "town of books". On April Fools' Day in 1977, Booth proclaimed Hay-on-Wye as an "independent kingdom". He declared himself as "King" and his horse as "Prime Minister".
The town hosts the annual Hay Festival of Literature & Arts. Literary connections to St. Joseph's include Penelope Betjeman, Christopher Dawson, Bridget Gubbins, Evelyn Waugh, and H.G. Wells.
Francis Kilvert is a literary connection for the geographical area known as "Kilvert country" which includes Hay-on-Wye and nearby villages, especially Clyro, Cusop and Llanigon.
Tabernacle Calvinistic Methodist Chapel, Hay-on-Wye (1828 - about 1963)
Howell Harris from Talgarth (near Hay-on-Wye) played a key role in the Welsh Methodist revival and the establishment of the Calvinistic Methodist denomination (now the Presbyterian Church of Wales). They are the only Christian denomination indigenous to Wales. Services are predominantly in Welsh. In 1811, the Calvinistic Methodist denomination separated from the Church of England (facilitating the ordination of their own ministers). In 1823, they seceded from the Wesleyan Methodist denomination. The Welsh Presbyterian Church in Wales has subtle and distinct differences with other Presbyterian churches in the UK.
In 1740, William Seward, an itinerant lay preacher from Coleg Trefeca (the Calvinistic Methodist theological college near Talgarth), and other outsiders visited Hay-on-Wye to promote their theology. Allegedly a stone thrown from a hostile crowd in Black Lion Green resulted in Seward receiving head injuries. He died a few days later, and he is widely known as the first Methodist martyr. The historicity of the Black Lion Green incident is disputed by some for various reasons, including the lack of contemporary evidence. Archdeacon Rev. Dr W. L. Bevan (Vicar of St. Mary's, 1845–1901), an authority on the history of the Welsh Church, said that the "highly coloured account of the martyr's death on the tombstone in Cusop churchyard is dated at least 100 years after Seward's death". The event may have been a conflation of similar well documented incidents endured by Seward and other itinerant preachers.
Some Methodist congregations were nicknamed "the Jumpers". In 1774, John Wesley preached in St. John's Chapel in Lion Street. He described "the Jumpers": "they clapped their hands with the utmost violence; they shook their heads; they distorted all their features; they threw their arms and legs to and fro in all variety of postures; they sang, roared, shouted, screamed with all their might to the no small terror of those that were near them".
In 1828, the Tabernacle Calvinistic Methodist Chapel was built in Belmont Road. The word "tabernacle" emphasises the presence of God and the practice of Holy Communion. The building of the new chapel was overseen by its minister, Rev. Dr. Thomas Phillips (1803–70), who lived in Castle Street on a stipend of £30 per annum. His previous ministry was to train clergy for the South Wales Home Missionary Society (in Neuadd-lwyd). Their missionary work targeted the anglicised areas in Wales, like Hay-on-Wye. It is not known if Tabernacle Chapel services were conducted in Welsh or English or both. Phillips facilitated the growth of the Tabernacle Chapel congregation, assisted by the absence of a Sunday evening service at nearby St. Mary's (then Anglican, but Church in Wales since 1920). Methodists often attended Anglican services as well as their own. Tabernacle Chapel services were at 11am, 2pm and 6pm on Sunday and 7pm on Monday. For many years "everyone in Wales went to Church or Chapel, three times on a Sunday and often during the week". A typical Sunday included "two full services and Sunday School sandwiched between them in the afternoon". In 1834, Samuel Lewis described the Tabernacle Chapel as a "handsome place of worship".
Phillips "kept a school". Pigot's Directory of 1830 states he was headmaster of the school in Heol‑y‑dŵr. Lewis commends the Methodist Chapel teachers for freely teaching local children. In 1836, after a decade at the Tabernacle Chapel, Phillips left to become the "indefatigable and marvellously successful" Welsh secretary of the ecumenical British and Foreign Bible Society in Hereford.Up to 1845, Welsh Calvinistic Methodists frequently used an itinerant or shared preaching system. A minister rarely served a single Chapel, instead, they were assigned to a broader circuit (known as a gofalaeth i.e. a group of Chapels). It was common for ministers not to depend entirely on a single small congregation for their livelihood. Many also worked as teachers, farmers etc. which often caused them to move frequently between border towns like Hay-on-Wye, Brecon, and Talgarth. The small congregation had to augment the meagre stipends given to ministers. It is likely that the Chapel adopted the practice of pew renting to generate income, thus most of the congregation stood throughout the services. The practice of pew renting was abolished from all churches and chapels by the mid-20th century, which would have had a negative impact on the financial viability of the Chapel.
Following Phillips departure there was a high-turnover of clergy between 1838 and 1875: Reverends Rees Harvard, William Evans, Owen Howell (1849), Evan William, Thomas Rees (1855), Moses Williams (1857), James Roberts, Thomas Hughes and Evan Williams. Clergy absences were covered by the students from Treveca (1858-1887). In 1877 without a minister in charge, William Powell a lay person and resident of Hay took charge intermittently (1877, 1887, 1889).
Between 1865 and 1872, whilst curate for Saint Michael and All Angels in Clyro, Francis Kilvert often visited Llanthomas (in Llanigon) and his friend Rev. Dr W. L. Bevan who lived in Hay Castle. Kilvert would have walked past the Tabernacle Chapel. Given his attention to detail in the surviving Kilvert diaries it might appear surprising that the Tabernacle Chapel (and the six other non-conformist chapels in Hay-on-Wye) are not mentioned. However, as a loyal Anglican, Kilvert had little time for non-conformists, whom he called dissenters.
At the end of the 19th century, of the 6,427 known non-conformist chapels in Wales, more than half had been rebuilt at least once. In 1872, a new stone-built chapel was partly built on the foundations of the original Tabernacle Chapel, retaining portions of the original walls. It cost £700 to build, worth about £100,000 today. The chapel was designed by the prolific Calvinistic Methodist architect Richard Owens of Liverpool. The building contractor was James Webb of Hay-on-Wye. Rev. Richmond Leigh Roose oversaw the building of the upgraded Tabernacle Chapel. He was the father of the Wales international footballer Leigh Richmond, who died in the 1916 Somme offensive. Leigh is commemorated at the Thiepval memorial in France. The successor to Rev. R. L. Roose as minister for the Tabernacle Chapel was Rev. B. Lewis.
The Calvinistic Methodist Minister Rev. Rhys Thomas Pryddererch (or Prytherch) was a respected preacher in the Hay-on-Wye area. He volunteered for the infantry in 1914 but was rejected on medical grounds. He declined the role of chaplain, not wanting officer privileges. He wanted to serve alongside the foot soldiers, living testimony to "the first will be last...". On his fifth application he was accepted as a private. He died within 10 days of arriving on the Western front. He is commemorated on the Hay-on-Wye and Cusop War Memorial.
The eventual reduction in the Tabernacle Chapel congregation size may be due to the small number of Welsh speakers in Hay-on-Wye and/or the nuanced theological differences with the nearby English speaking chapels: Trinity Wesleyan Methodist (Oxford Road), Bethesda Primitive Methodist (Oxford Road), Ebenezer Independent Methodist (Broad Street), Salem Baptist (Bell Bank), Quakers (Bridge Street) and the Salvation Army (Lion Street). Emigration to the United States by non-conformists seeking greater religious freedom was another factor, at one time 30 Tabernacle members emigrated to the United States. The Tabernacle Chapel closed sometime in the 1960s. The last known dated document is a 1963 list of preachers who were qualified and available to lead services when the regular minister was unavailable.
St. Joseph's Parish and Church, Hay-on-Wye (1892 - 1926)
The book Brief Lives provides the oldest known reference to a Roman Catholic in Hay. Aubrey describes how William Watson was captured in a field by Hay, tried for treason and found guilty at Winchester, where he was executed in 1603. Lists of Papists were maintained by (the then) Anglican Diocese of St. Davids. The 1706 list identifies Roger Harper an innkeeper and the 1767 list identifies two unnamed female milliners aged 30 and 60.
Following the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, the Catholic population in England and Wales was on a rising trajectory. In 1850, Pope Pius IX restored the hierarchy of dioceses in England and Wales in Universalis Ecclesiae. Wales was split between the Diocese of Shrewsbury and the Diocese of Newport and Menevia. Misunderstanding of a pastoral letter by Cardinal Wiseman (the Archbishop of Westminster) prompted the burning of effigies of the Pope and the Cardinal throughout England. On November 5th 1850, a small group of protesters burnt effigies by the Hay-on-Wye clock tower. Parishioners from St. Mary's (St Mary's Road) and their Vicar Rev. Dr. W. L. Bevan were conspicuously absent from the protest.