National Library of Wales.

Corporate body

National Library of Wales.

This questionnaire was prepared by the National Library of Wales in 1935-36 to enquire into the existence, content and condition of the records of local churches. The then librarian Sir William Llewelyn Davies in two addresses delivered to meetings of the unions of the Welsh Baptists and the Welsh Independents in 1935 and 1936, emphasised the historical importance of these records. He appealed on behalf of the National Library to the two unions to send out 'questionnaires' to all the chapels in order to secure 'a valuable account of the historical materials which are preserved until today in the care of the various churches throughout the country'. This appeal was backed up by letters and publications of the two unions, but, in spite of this, only 113 replies were received from the Independents and 132 from the Baptist churches out of a total of some 2,500 chapels. This compared with a response rate of almost 100 per cent from the Anglican churches in Wales. The replies showed that very few chapels were in possession of registers which pre-dated the nineteeth century. It was revealed, too, that a number of volumes remained in the possession of the families of former officials of these churches, rather than remaining in the custody of the chapels themselves. An attempt was made to persuade the Independents and the Baptists in Wales to follow the example of the Calvinistic Methodists in collecting their records together for deposit in the Library. This campaign was a general failure.

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