In the 1990s a basement in Station Terrace was apparently used as a prayer room by Lampeter Muslims. A prayer room (for Muslims) in Rhoselyn Hall is mentioned in the 1993-94 Students' Union Handbook. A dedicated mosque for Muslim students and town residents then became available at the University's Sheikh Khalifa Building, which opened in 1997. The campus mosque was described as an outbuilding in the carpark behind the University's Centre for Islamic Studies - 'small, unremarkable, rectangular' (Rhys Dafydd Jones, 2011, p.69). The building had been the University's Media Centre and the Annual Report for 1998-99 notes that improvements had been made to this building with outside support. In 2010 the mosque was refurbished with prayer spaces for men and women, a small library, and an ablution area.
The Sheikh Khalifa Building is now (2025) closed and the present status of the mosque uncertain. Information from Nicky Hammond, Special Collections Archivist, Lampeter, per Bethan Hopkins-Williams.
This record was created by RCAHMW’s Welsh Asian Heritage Project (2023–24), funded by the Welsh Government’s Anti-racist Wales Action Plan.
Sources:
(1) Rhys Dafydd Jones, 'Faith, Identity and the Everyday: the Quotidian Geographies of Muslims in West Wales', Aberystwyth PhD thesis, 2011 (2) University of Wales Trinity St David, 'Information about the University Chapel and Mosque' (undated).