1868: Reverend William Watkiss led the first service to be held at Wood Street Congregational Church in Temperance Town. The famous acrobat Blondin had performed on the high-wire at the building when it was a music hall. Circus performances had also been staged there before it became a chapel. In 1964, when the building had become very dilapidated, it was studied in detail by three young architectural students who described it as ‘the finest architectural treasure in the city’. Inside they discovered mysterious doors that led nowhere, false windows and the fact that the five brown-painted doors facing Havelock Street had brick walls immediately behind them. In 1972 the old chapel was demolished to make way for a car park. Later an office block was built on the site. Twenty-five-year-old Christopher Pendlebury sold his collection of vintage cars to buy the chapel’s organ and rebuild it at his father’s farm at St Mellons. The Congregational Chapel at St Mellons was reopened after extensive refurbishment on this date in 1955. It was intended to serve the expanding population of Llanrumney but its location on the wrong side of the busy A48 led to its premature closure. (Stewart Williams, Cardiff Yesterday)