Casgliadau Arlein

Three paged letter and copy of children’s story sent by Rev. Irving Penberthy to Elizabeth O'Brien, survivor of the Aberfan disaster. Dated 22 February 2008. Irving Penberthy, originally from Cornwall where he had been born in 1930, was the minister at Zion Methodist Chapel. He was 35 years old in 1966. Trained at Cliff College, he had been ministering in Cardiff before being asked to move to Merthyr Tydfil in 1963, from where he looked after the churches in Merthyr itself, Dowlais and Aberfan. His was an English-speaking chapel among primarily Welsh speaking ones. He was the visiting chaplain at the giant Hoover factory at Pentrebach. He conducted assemblies at the senior school in Aberfan, and at the chapel he ran the most successful of the villages Sunday Schools, which attracted as many as 50 children. He also ran a Sunshine Club on Mondays open to any of the children the village, and a cinema club on Saturday mornings. Attached to the letter is a story ‘The Land of Sunshine’ which was written by the Rev. Penberthy for the surviving children of the Aberfan disaster to try and explain what had happened to their friends.