Workmen's Hall

Many of the South Wales valley welfare halls originally opened as concert venues, as meeting places for the local miner’s lodges and lecture halls for the Workers Educational Association (WEA). They nearly always contained meeting rooms, reading rooms and libraries. It was only in the late 1920s that they began to venture into film presentations. These early welfare halls were often equipped with movable benches these being later replaced with fixed seats as the film side of the halls' operations became more important and fire safety regulations were enforced.Thus the original seating calculations for these welfare halls was a calculation of what the hall could physically seat rather than the actual number of seats.