Rhyl

• See separate Bibliography section

• When Morley Road cemetery was landscaped in 1967, the Monumental Inscriptions were recorded and indexed, and a plan was made. A Book of Remembrance was subsequently compiled from these records. The original survey and the Book of Remembrance are held in the Library and Arts Centre, Church Street, Rhyl.
  Mr Derek Bartley, of Clwyd FHS, has transcribed and indexed the Book of Remembrance, and copies are available for sale from Clwyd Family History Society.
• The Dyserth Road Church cemetery (directly opposite the much larger municipal cemetery) has 1532 burial plots, with well over 2200 burials.
  Mr Bartley has recorded and indexed the Monumental Inscriptions of the Church cemetery, and copies are available for sale from Clwyd Family History Society.

• When Holy Trinity church was built in 1835, no provision was made for burials on the site - many burials continued to take place at Rhuddlan. With the rapid expansion of the town, demand grew for a local burial ground - preferably a municipal (non-denominational) cemetery, in accordance with the wishes of the (majority) nonconformist population. However, their wishes were not met; and at 3.00 p.m. on Wednesday, 15 June 1859, a small plot of land in Morley Road (O.S. map reference SJ 012814) was consecrated by the Bishop of St. Asaph, to be the Church cemetery for Rhyl. The first burial, that of a young child, took place later the same afternoon.
  By the late 1880's, all available plots in the Morley Road cemetery had been taken - contemporary newspapers refer to overcrowding, with undignified scenes during funerals. The Rhyl Improvement Commissioners began negotiations to purchase 7½ acres of land in Dyserth Road (O.S. map reference SJ 025811), with the intention that the land should become a municipal cemetery, funded by the ratepayers. This provoked another dispute between "Church and Chapel", similar to that of thirty years earlier, but much more fiercely contested. It proved impossible to reach a satisfactory compromise, and eventually the Church authorities decided to buy a plot of land in Dyserth Road, directly opposite the intended site of the municipal cemetery (but smaller), to be used as a Church cemetery. The Bishop of St. Asaph consecrated this new Church cemetery on Monday, 1 June 1891.
  No new graves were opened at Morley Road after this date, but some burials continued in existing graves until the 1930's. The gravestones at Morley Road were removed in the late 1960's, and the area was landscaped to form a small park.
  After the opening of the Church cemetery in Dyserth Road, work on the municipal cemetery proceeded very slowly - it was another 18 months before it was ready for use. The opening ceremony took place on Monday, 28 November 1892 (by which time there had already been three burials!)
  The large "municipal" cemetery in Dyserth Road is now administered by Denbighshire County Council - Rhyl moved to Denbighshire in 1996 !
  The records date from the opening of the cemetery in 1892.
  The address to contact is :  Sylvia Jones, Technical Services, Caledfryn (Council Offices), Smithfield Road, Denbigh. LL16 3RJ

See separate page for details regarding these churches in Rhyl

• Holy Trinity
• St Thomas
• St John
• St Ann

Various items on the People's Collection Wales site

• Rhyl English Baptist Chapel 
• Brunswick Welsh Methodist Chapel, Rhyl,
• Calvinistic Methodist Chapel, Clwyd Street, Rhyl
• Tabernacle Welsh Baptist Chapel (Water Street), Rhyl
• Carmel Welsh Independent Chapel, Queen Street, Rhyl
• Bath Street English Methodist Chapel, Rhyl
• Christchurch (English Congregational) Chapel, Water Street, Rhyl
• St. Thomas's Church, Rhyl

Nonconformist Churches

"Welsh Church Commission - County of Flint - The Statistics of the Nonconformist Churches for 1905" lists the following nonconformist places of worship in the Civil parish of Rhyl :

• The following nonconformist registers for the Rhyl area are held at the Flintshire Record Office, Hawarden (FRO), at the Denbighshire Record Office, Ruthin (DRO), or at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (NLW).
  They have not been filmed; and they have not been incorporated into the I.G.I. :

The new parish of Rhyl was assigned to the No. 1 ("St. Asaph") sub-district of the St. Asaph Registration District, which was co-extensive with the St. Asaph poor law Union.

In the GRO indexes to civil registration, entries for Rhyl are found under:

• Years 1837 - 1851: St. Asaph XXVII. nnn
• Years 1852 - 1946: St. Asaph 11b. nnn

(GRO index references have no relevance at the local Superintendent Registrar's Office)

Welcome to Rhyl and Prestatyn

Journey to the past -  Rhyl

Rhyl - on wikipedia

• Geograph
• Flickr

• Ask for a calculation of the distance from Rhyl to another place.

Various items on the People's Collection Wales site

• Crosville double decker, Rhyl, 1958 
• Postcard of the Savoy Café, West Parade c.1920s

"North-East Wales Churches and Ancient Parish Boundaries" produced by Clwyd Record Office in 1994, published by Genuki with the permission of Flintshire Record Office and Denbighshire Archives

You can see maps centred on OS grid reference SJ007812 (Lat/Lon: 53.318383, -3.492106), Rhyl which are provided by:

• OpenStreetMap
• Google Maps
• StreetMap (Current Ordnance Survey maps)
• OpenStreetMap Cymru (Welsh counties only)
• Bing (was Multimap)
• Old Maps Online
• National Library of Scotland (Old Ordnance Survey maps)
• Vision of Britain (Click "Historical units & statistics" for administrative areas.)
• Magic (Geographic information) (Click + on map if it doesn't show)
• GeoHack (Links to on-line maps and location specific services.)

• All places within the same township/parish shown on an Openstreetmap map.
• Nearby townships/parishes shown on an Openstreetmap map.
• Nearby places shown on an Openstreetmap map.

Rhyl Harbour c1910 on the People's Collection Wales site

Rhyl lifeboat rescues ORIENTAL's crew 26 Oct 1859 on the People's Collection Wales site

Various items on the People's Collection Wales site

• War Badge Record for George Snelson of Rhyl (1916) 
• An article from the Flintshire Observer about the death of Jasper Rope from Rhyl during The First World War.
• 14th Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers Old Comrades' Dinner, Rhyl, 1939
• Photograph of officers of officers from Women's Auxiliary Army Corps who served in Bourges, France with American Expeditionary Forces during World War 1, taken at Kimmel Park, nr Rhyl
• Thomas Williams (born in Landore, Swansea) enlisted with the 14th Battalion of the South Wales Borderers (the ‘Swansea Pals’) on 3 June 1915. This is the railway pass for him to travel from his home to the training camp at Rhyl.

The Rhyl Advertiser Jan 5 1878 on the People's Collection Wales site

Newspaper extracts

Various items on the People's Collection Wales site

• Rhyl Beach c1917 
• Rhyl Promenade, 1942
• Donkeys at the beach in Rhyl c1917
• "Rhyl Swifts" 1907
• Audience watching "The Jolly Boys" at the Coliseum Theatre, Promenade, Rhyl. c. 1920
• May Day, Rhyl. 1915. Taken at the bottom of Water Street, looking towards Wellington Road
• Postcard of the Children’s Lake, c.1920s. The original Rhyl Pavilion, seen in the background, was built in 1907..
• Postcard of the Miniature Railway, Rhyl, c.1911
• Model of Rhyl Pier as it was in 1880
• This photograph of the North Wales Comrades was taken at Rhyl in 1914.
• Patients at the John Jones Convalescent Home in Rhyl, 1925