OPENED in 1742, the Church was founded by Rev Edmund Jones, who was known as ‘Yr hen brophwyd’ or ‘The Prophet’.

Born in 1702, Edmund Jones was preaching in the 1720s and by the 1730s was preaching regularly at Pontypool.

In 1740, he came to live at Lower Pen Tranch and was an enthusiastic champion of church reform and the Methodist Revival in Wales.

After gathering together a congregation, Jones founded and had the Ebeneezer United Reform Church built. He continued as pastor until he died at the age of 91 in 1793 and is buried in the chapel’s graveyard.

Later in the 1790s, several members of the congregation of ‘Ebeneezer Chapel’, as it became known, emigrated to America and named their new community in Pennsylvania, Ebensburg (after Ebeneezer).

In 2011, the Chapel was totally refurbished and with Welsh Government and other grants, became a Community Centre.

This picture of the Ebeneezer United Reform Church was painted by Obediah Hodges, an Ebbw Vale man about whom little is known except that he travelled around south Wales from c. 1890 to the early 1920s, painting and sketching as many churches and chapels as he could visit.

Several of Obediah Hodges’ paintings of local churches are in the Torfaen Museum Collection.

Nostalgia is provided by Torfaen Museum.