Noddfa Chapel, Treorchy

[1] This was during the initial phase of industrialisation in the Rhondda Valleys, and the chapel had to be extended as soon as 1876 due to the rapid growth in population.

Reportedly seating 1,000, it had an unusually ornate interior for a Welsh chapel, with a stained glass window of John the Baptist in the lobby, three aisles, an 'all-round' gallery, and a three-manual organ, and has been described as "the Rhondda Valley's cathedral of nonconformity".

[2] Several branches of Noddfa were opened in the later decades of the nineteenth century, including Ainon, Treorchy and Bethel, Cwmparc.

The chapel had its own choir, conducted by John Hughes, and oratorios by Handel, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart were performed on a regular basis, with three or four such productions each year.

"In the pages of the future historian of musical progress in the Rhondda Valley', wrote one correspondent reviewing the Christmas concert programme in 1907, "the achievements of the Noddfa (Treorchy) Choral Society will loom large".