We have sat at kitchen tables in Deiniolen since 1980 — listening before we give.
DEINIOLEN TRUST FUND is a small registered charity of four trustees pooling modest sums each year so that the everyday work of one Welsh village — its school, its cylch meithrin, its memorial hall, its families through hard winters — can carry on, quietly.
“They sat with us at the kitchen table — that was the whole of it.”
Eleri, 71, Deiniolen
Sat · 06 Jun 2026 · 14.00Diwrnod y CyhoeddMemorial Hall · open trustee surgery
Ein gwerthoedd · Our values
A trust the size of the village it serves.
We are four trustees with one address, one phone, and one promise: that the small amount we hold each year will reach the people of Deiniolen, by name, without ceremony.
01
Quiet locality.
Our governing Scheme of 22 May 1980 names a single village — Deiniolen — as our area of benefit. We have never asked for more.
02
Modest sums, careful judgement.
The largest grant we made last year was £450. The smallest was £40 for a child’s eisteddfod entry. Both took the same evening to consider.
03
Trustees, not staff.
We have no paid employees. Every letter is written by one of the four trustees — Brian, Glyn, Gwyn or Marina — at their own kitchen table, in their own time.
04
Welsh first, English alongside.
The village we serve lives most of its life in Welsh. Our application forms come in Cymraeg as standard; we translate into English on request. The Eisteddfod, the cylch meithrin, the Sunday school, the slate-quarry heritage walks — all of them sound first in Welsh on this hill.
Mewn ffigurau · By the figures
A small charity in a small village.
Our 2025 return to the Charity Commission, plain on the page: nothing inflated, nothing dressed up. These are the four numbers that describe us best.
0Grants made · 2025From the football club to a child’s school trip.
0Total awarded · 2025Exactly matched by our income, as the Scheme requires.
0TrusteesBrian, Glyn, Gwyn, Marina — meeting four times a year.
0Years since the SchemeThe original Trust Scheme was sealed on 22 May 1980.
Ein rhaglenni · Our programmes
Four small kinds of help, named in Welsh.
Our Scheme allows us to act in four ways. We have given each of them a Welsh name so that the village can ask for what it needs without having to read a deed of trust.
Recreation · Object (c)
Grantiau Cymunedol
Community grants of £50–£450 to village societies, clubs and choirs — the football team, the cylch meithrin, Capel Bethel’s Sunday school, the Memorial Hall roof appeal.
Quiet help to Deiniolen families through difficult weeks — a fuel-card top-up, a school uniform, a week’s shopping when there’s nothing in the cupboard.
Small sums to ease a hospital stay, a convalescence, or the days after a death — flowers for the chapel, a taxi to Ysbyty Gwynedd, a card and a tin of biscuits.
Small bursaries to Deiniolen learners — a set text for the GCSE Welsh exam, a coach to a school trip, an apprenticeship tool kit, the eisteddfod entry fee.
A trust this small still needs three pairs of extra hands.
We are four trustees and we will stay four trustees — that is what the Scheme allows — but a handful of volunteers help us read, translate, and welcome the village in.
Tue evenings · 18.00–20.00 · a fortnight
Grant-application reader
Read the month’s short applications alongside a trustee and help us sort them into the four programmes. Welsh and English welcome; no prior experience needed.
Read more →Correspondence as it arrives · ~3 hours a month
Cyfieithydd · Welsh translator
Help us reply to English-only enquiries in good plain Cymraeg, and the other way round. We aim never to make someone write in a second language to ask us for help.
Welcome villagers to our annual Diwrnod y Cyhoedd at the Memorial Hall: pour tea, hand out application forms, sit with first-time visitors who feel shy about asking.
Every story below began with a paper application read at a kitchen table. Names are used with permission; ages are accurate to the year the grant was given.
Story · Llaw i’r Aelwyd · Winter 2024
Eleri’s first winter on her own.
After Hywel’s funeral in November 2024, Eleri sat at her own kitchen table for the first time in fifty-one years. The boiler had gone out the week before; she had not noticed. Marina visited the following Tuesday and read the meter with her. The trustees met that evening and signed a £120 fuel-card top-up before anyone had finished their tea.
“They sat with us at the kitchen table — that was the whole of it,” Eleri says now. “Nobody asked me to prove anything. Brian had known Hywel since the quarry.”
The 2025 Urdd Eisteddfod required a printed copy of a Gwyneth Lewis collection that was out of stock at Palas Print and not in the school library. Tomos’s mother wrote to us in early April; the trustees approved a £40 grant the same fortnight, and the bookshop posted the copy directly to the school.
Tomos came second in his age group. The copy of the book is now in Ysgol Brynrefail’s library, signed by him on the inside cover.
Ifor worked the Dinorwig quarry from sixteen to thirty-two. In 2025 he asked the trust for £250 towards a single autumn afternoon at the old quarry incline: a guided walk in Welsh, tea and bara brith at the Memorial Hall afterwards, an oral-history recording for the Cymdeithas Hanes archive. Sixty-three people came. Six men over seventy spoke about the quarry on tape for the first time in their lives.
All trustee surgeries are held in the side room of Deiniolen Memorial Hall. No appointment needed; tea and bara brith provided.
Thu21May 2026
Bore Coffi · Spring coffee morning
Open trustee surgery and applications afternoon. Bring a half-page note about the project you would like us to help; we will read it together over a cup of tea.
Our annual open day: the four trustees, all twelve of last year’s grant files on the table, and an honest conversation about the year ahead. Refreshments by the Sunday school.
The trust’s annual carol service at Capel Bethel, with collection in aid of Llaw i’r Aelwyd. Côr Meibion Dyffryn Peris and the children of Ysgol Gwaun Gynfi.
Six villagers who have written to the trust or who have received a small grant in the last two years. All names and ages are used with permission.
“They wrote back the same week. The cheque was for £60 for the heating, and a note from Brian remembering my brother. I keep both in the same drawer.”
“We applied on behalf of the football club. The grant was modest — £250 for new corner-flags and a defibrillator service — but they read every line of what we wrote.”
“They sat with us at the kitchen table — that was the whole of it. Nobody asked me to prove anything. Brian had known Hywel since the quarry.”
“The trust paid for the printing of the village-history pamphlet. Two-hundred copies, all distributed by Christmas. It is the smallest charitable cheque I have ever cashed and the one I am proudest of.”
“Our cylch meithrin had run out of Welsh-language story books. Marina arrived a fortnight later with a wicker basket of them. None of it was paperwork; all of it was kindness.”
“I asked the trust for £80 towards my apprentice tool kit. Glyn dropped the cheque off himself on his way to the chapel. He asked how my Nain was.”
Llythyrau chwarterol · Quarterly post
Four short letters a year.
Our quarterly dispatch lists the grants we have given in the last three months, the AGM date, and any small piece of village news the trustees feel ought to be shared. Always by post or PDF; never more often than the village needs us.
O amgylch · Around the village
A short walk through Deiniolen.
The geography that shapes everything we do. Eight images from a single Tuesday in late spring — the village street, the lake below, the slate above, and the small civic buildings the trust sits between.
Stryd Goch
The main street of the village; most of our post-bag is delivered from here.
Memorial Hall
Two board meetings a year, the annual Diwrnod y Cyhoedd, and the carol-service collection.
Capel Bethel
The chapel where the annual carol service has been held every December since 1983.
Llyn Padarn
The lake below the village; our 2025 footpath grant rebuilt the fingerpost on the path down.
Elidir Fawr
The mountain that the village wakes up to. The slate quarry on its eastern flank made Deiniolen.
Dinorwig Quarry
Closed in 1969; still the dominant feature of the skyline. Ifor’s autumn walks happen here.
Ysgol Gwaun Gynfi
The Welsh-medium primary school; about half our Lle i Ddysgu bursaries come via here.
Hysbysfwrdd
Where this year’s grant list is pinned each January, in Welsh and English.
Gwariwyd · How the year was spent
What this year’s £3,104 actually bought.
The 2025 grants summary, printed in February for the AGM.
A small charity at this scale will not change a region. It can, modestly, do things like this — and a record of those things, plainly listed, is the only honest answer to the question where did the money go?
£450 · April + July 2025
Defibrillator service + corner-flags.
Clwb Pêl-droed Deiniolen. Two-year certification (we asked for the longer one).
£120 · November 2024
Fuel-card top-up after bereavement.
Llaw i’r Aelwyd. Marina read the meter; Brian had known her late husband at the quarry.
£104 · September 2024
School uniform, three children.
Llaw i’r Aelwyd. The set cost a little more than we had budgeted; we agreed the difference by phone.
£40 + £60 · March, August 2025
Chapel flowers, two funerals.
Galar a Gwellhad. The smallest grants we made all year, and two of the proudest.
£40 · April 2025
Eisteddfod set-text for Tomos.
Lle i Ddysgu. Tomos came second in his age group; the book is now in the school library.
£80 · May 2025
Apprentice joiner’s tool-kit, Dafydd.
Lle i Ddysgu. Glyn delivered the cheque himself and stopped to ask about his Nain.
O’r ddesg · From the writing desk
Three sentences from this year’s post-bag.
“The cheque arrived in the post on the Friday with a card that just said cofion, Marina.”Eleri, 71, Deiniolen
“He asked how my Nain was. We talked on the doorstep for twenty minutes.”Dafydd, 19, Brynrefail
“It is the smallest charitable cheque I have ever cashed and the one I am proudest of.”Bryn, 67, Penisarwaun
DEINIOLEN TRUST FUND
Diolch.
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