Bryn (Welsh for 'hill') is a village and community in Neath Port Talbot County Borough in Wales.

The location is not certain, although the first Vicar of St Theodore's Church 'D J Jones' refers to the site as Drysiog Farm.

In order to move this vast amount of coal to the copper works, a mineral railway was constructed.

The bed of the railway can still be traced by turning at the Carmel church and following the line adjacent to Bryngurnos Street and along the B4282 towards Cwmavon.

In total 'The Coal Authority' hold three abandonment plans which are indexed as Drysiog Mine, these being numbers 16, 5856 and SW.295.

The Owners at the time of abandonment were given as Parc-y-Bryn Colliery Company of then Station Road, Port Talbot.

The plan is signed by John Perry Bevan (Director) and Gomer Hughes (Surveyor) On 13 December 1994 a grant of up to 20,000 pounds sterling to New Parc Fuels Limited towards the development of a coal mine at Bryn Newydd, Port Talbot was Commissioned.

However, the school was actually established by the governor and owner of Cwmavon Copper Works which opened Bryn's first colliery and constructed cottages to house the new workers.

Miss Margret Williams was appointed Headmistress of the new school on 7 November 1885 with a salary of £40 per annum to be paid from 1 January 1886.

During its short life, indications of construction weaknesses included: 25 November 1886 - Storm damage to the roof.

5 July 1889 - Tenders were obtained for the replacement of wooden eave troughs with more sturdy iron versions.

Three sites were offered by Charlotte Emily Talbot for a lease of 99 years at the cost of between £20 - £25 depending on the location.

Trail holes[clarification needed] were created and the site by St Tydfil's Church was selected; that building was intended for 254 pupils (60 infants and 194 aged 7+).

Worries arose in May 1905 because of teachers travailing to Bryn by the PTR (Port Talbot Railway) and the matter of train times meant they would arrive late, the decision to open the school at 9:30am rather than 9:00am meant the teachers could travel on the train that would arrive in Bryn at 9:35am.

However, due to perceived low pupil numbers, a decision was made by the local education authority in 2014 to close the school and it officially shut its gates on 31 August 2015.

A delay in the already started railway to Barry took 11 years, which worried the colliery owners, and so the PTR was constructed.

The Cwmcerwin tunnel which still exists today has long been boarded up, but you can still see the red-bricked archway and the letters "PTR" and the date '1897'.

The old track can clearly be seen today; the tunnel had a hump where the 1-in-40 gradient from Port Talbot meets the downwards slope to Maesteg.

The passenger life only lasted 30 years; the service was put in peril in the 1920s when the main road was constructed from Port Talbot to Bryn and Maesteg.

In 1840 the Bryn Methodists who were attending services at Dyffryn and Pontrhydyfen decided to have their own place of worship.

They took over a small mill (Y Felin Fach) on the west bank of Nant Ffrwdwyllt opposite Farteg Fawr farm.

The first Baptists appeared in Bryn in 1848, services were held in a barn belonging to the colliery company, probably near Coalyard Row.

In 1869 £70 was spent on improving the building, with this being paid by 1877, fortunately before the first colliery closed; when many of its members left the village in search for jobs, membership fell to only 14.

Again, economic depression in the 1930s interfered with the plans, and with the cost totalling £1750 for the 80 strong members, the decision was made to continue to use the vestry building as the chapel.

This is the youngest church in Bryn, the formation service was held in 1917 when the chapel was accepted into the English Baptist Association; at that time they had 13 members, against a devastating war in Europe and the Middle East.

They took the initiative to send a petition to Talbot for the provision for a church in Bryn, possibly for her generosity in founding St Theodores in 1897.

[5] Bryn acquired its first public house in 1850, it was at the lower end of Farteg Row, which in the 1851 census was listed as number 13.

One of his daughters, Margaret, lived at number 4 with her husband Thomas Daniel, until her mother died in 1883, and they took over the Royal Oak Inn.

Bryn was once a very self-contained village with its own petrol station and numerous shops, as well as having a brickworks and a various coal mines.

With the advances of more modern transport, the people of Bryn now had the luxury to travel to the nearby towns of Port Talbot and Maesteg to shop; with the improved PTR day trips were becoming the norm to the seaside of Aberavon and Porthcawl.