Walter Powell Nicholas (1868-1926) was the fifth son of John Nicholas, a colliery manager of Brynamman, Carmarthenshire. He was a brilliant lawyer, who after training in Neath and Newport offices obtained First Class Honours and the Law Society Prize in 1894. In 1897, he joined Walter Morgan's Pontypridd firm of solicitors as a partner. Within a year he had become solicitor to the newly-formed South Wales Miners' Federation, and also, like his partner Morgan, had become a Glamorgan county councillor (like Morgan, he was a staunch Liberal). In 1901, at the death of Morgan, he took over the clerkship of the Rhondda Urban District Council. As Chris Williams has put it, 'during the next two decades [he] established himself as "King of the Rhondda"'. He was an outstanding figure in local government, both as an officer (where his influence was considerable, together with W. H. Mathias and Thomas Griffiths) and as a county councillor. He became a particularly close friend and associate of W. H. Mathias. Nicholas also exerted much influence on a wider stage, as chairman of the Urban District Councils Association of England and Wales, and as a member of various royal commissions.65 He was knighted in the Lloyd George New Year's Honours of 1919. Despite all his fame, Nicholas continued to live locally, at a large house called the Garth, Trealaw. He died in 1926, at the age of fifty-eight.
SOURCE: The Entrepreneurial Society of the Rhondda Valleys, 1840-1920 By Richard Griffiths