For 50 years Reverend Francis Hiley was Pastor at the Baptist Chapel in Llanwenarth in Monmouthshire, South Wales. He was born in the village in 1780 and died there in 1860.
Francis studied in Abergevenny and was appointed by Llanwenarth in 1811. Along with a co-pastor, James Lewis, Francis baptised over 1400 people. Membership of the chapel grew rapidly and many independent 'daughter' churches were founded throughout the area.
Francis Hiley was a renowned preacher in both Welsh and English. He was known as the 'Silver Trumpet of Gwent' and was reported to have preached outdoors to great crowds of over 1000 people, standing on top of a wall so that he could be seen by all.Christmas Evans, a great Welsh non-conformist preacher, said that he would never preach after him.
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Portraits of Francis Hiley from the Welsh Portrait Collection at the National Library of Wales (in the Public Domain).
More on Francis Hiley's family and the 'Welsh Hileys' in the next post
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