Aberdare
Highland Place Unitarian Church
Monk Street
Aberdare
Mid Glamorgan
CF44 7PN
Tel: (01685) 873440
Services: 11 am (Second Sunday), 6pm (other Sundays)
Women League Meeting Wednesday 2pm
For further information visit the -
Highland Place, Aberdare website
Highland Place Church celebrates its 150th Anniversary in 2010. To celebrate this event, three public lectures are being held, details of these follow.
LECTURE PROGRAMME
27th May at 7.30 p.m
Dr Chris Turner will speak on 'Religion & Revival: Aberdare in 1859/60'.
Dr Chris Turner was born in Aberaman. He attended Aberdare Boys' Grammar School and then went to Aberystwyth University where he obtained the degrees of BA in History and then in 1979 he was awarded a PhD at Aberystwyth. His PhD thesis was on "Religion and Revivals in Victorian and Edwardian Wales". He has published numerous articles on religious developments in 19th and early 20th century Wales. He has held various managerial positions at the universities in Bangor, Aberystwyth and Cardiff and is currently Director of Registry, Governance and Students at Cardiff University. He lives near Cowbridge and is married with two sons.
10th June at 7.30 p.m
Joe England will speak on 'Radicalism & Unitarianism in Merthyr & Aberdare'.
Joe England began his working life as a journalist and after editing the South Wales Voice, became a tutor-organiser for the WEA in South Wales, and then Deputy Director of the Department for Extra-Mural Studies in the University of Hong Kong. He then moved to the University of Warwick as a Research Fellow in Industrial Relations and subsequently became Warden and chief executive of Coleg Harlech, Wales' residential college for adults.
He has written many articles and books on adult education, Welsh history, industrial relations and labour movements in Hong Kong and Britain. He edited and contributed to the WEA centenary volume Changing Lives: Workers' Education in Wales 1907-2007. He is currently writing a series of articles on nineteenth century Merthyr politics and editing a history of Cyfarthfa School.
7th October at 7.30 p.m
The Revered Dr. Ann Peart will speak on 'Notable Unitarian Women'.
The Reverend Dr. Ann Peart is a life-long Unitarian, though she only became really involved with chapel life where at the age of 18 she became May Queen of Hyde Chapel near Manchester, and thus spent a year helping with junior chapel and visiting the sick and housebound. After over twenty years serving the movement at local and national level as a lay person she trained for the ministry at the then Manchester College, Oxford, and subsequently held ministries in London (Lewisham and Golders Green) and Manchester (Gorton) before becoming principal of Unitarian College in Manchester, a post from which she retired in the summer of 2009.
Her first professional career was as a Geography teacher, but her later research was on the history of Unitarian women, and the place of women within the Unitarian movement. She has been involved with many aspects of British and international Unitarianism, from serving at Unitarian headquarters as the Information Officer to being a founder member of the Unitarian Women’s Group, and has held a variety of national officers, including chair of the Social Responsibility committee, and Ministry Commission, president of the Women’s League, Ministerial Fellowship and Unitarian Historical Society. She has been particularly active in Gay and Lesbian and feminist issues.
She is currently a member of the Executive Committee, but expects to retire from this on election as the GA vicepresident in April 2010. In her spare time she enjoys walking, music, yoga and gardening.