Capel - The Chapels Heritage Society published in it's July 1988 newsletter an article giving the history of Wood Street
Congregational Church.
View the PDF document and look to page 7 onwards

Religious services were sometimes conducted at the Temperance Hall. In due course the hall was acquired by the Congregational denomination and converted into a church.
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Services at the Wood Street Congregational Church, Cardiff, Glamorgan, were begun by William Watkiss (d 1892) in the Temperance Hall, at the corner of Wood Street and Havelock Street, in 1868. The building was later purchased by the Wood Street Congregationalists. After renovations and extensions, it became the largest Congregational Church in south Wales, but remained heavily indebted until 1918. An adjoining building, Rapers Hotel, was acquired in c. 1917 by the Cardiff and District Congregational Board, and part was used by Wood Street Church as a Sunday School. In 1963, the Church considered but rejected a move to Westgate Street, Cardiff. The Wood Street church was demolished later in the 1960s, to make way for re-development.

View of Temperance Town
from the north
This photograph, taken about 1870,
courtesy Cardiff Central Library
 

In 1935 there were 135 houses on the south side of Wood Street. Those houses were occupied by 880 people, many of whom were sub-tenants. At an average of six and half people per house it is clear there must have been considerable overcrowding. One address where overcrowding was especially acute was 2 Havelock Street, the home of Mark and Maud Tipples. Marilyn Tipples, wife of one of the grandsons of Mark and Maud, has told me they had 10 children, though the youngest had died very young in 1927. One of their older sons, Marilyn’s father-in-law, was married in 1932. He and his wife continued to lodge with Mark and Maud, and by 1937 they had added three more children to the family.
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