Wheal Busy Chapel, Attached Walls, Gate-Piers And Railings

This is a Bible Christian chapel, built in 1863, as indicated by a datestone. It is constructed from killas rubble with granite dressings. The roof is covered in grouted scantle slate, featuring pierced and crested red clay ridge tiles and finials, with cast-iron ogee gutters and downpipes.

The chapel has a small, rectangular, aisle-less plan, with a later 19th-century porch added in front of the original doorway and a gallery to the ritual west end. The exterior is single-storey and symmetrical, with two windows to the front. Segmental brick arches frame the original 6/9-pane hornless sash windows at both the front and rear. The gable-ended porch features an open braced truss as a barge board, above a granite name and date panel with a relief inscription. The basket-arched doorway has a leaded overlight, panelled doors, flanking leaded sidelights, and side buttresses.

The interior remains unaltered, with a plaster ceiling cornice and roses. It features a panelled dado, a panelled gallery front supported on brackets and slender columns, and L-plan staircases with stick balusters and turned newel posts. The original round-arched doorway includes a spoked fanlight above a pair of panelled doors. The chapel contains box pews in the gallery and central area, with space for loose fittings on either side. Box choir and leaders' pews are ramped up on either side of the communion area and rostrum. These pews and other fittings are panelled, with open balustraded friezes to the front and sides of the lower pews, including the doors. The communion area and the rail to the rostrum share similar detailing. A loose leaders’ bench is positioned in front of the rostrum, which features a projecting panelled centrepiece with arched panels and a moulded cornice. A tall, turned balustrade flanks the rostrum’s sides, the right side curving, with a straight-flight staircase leading to the left; turned lamp standards top the handrail.

Subsidiary features include slurried rubble walls with gabled coping enclosing a garden court, granite coped walls topped with ornate cast-iron railings, and a central gateway with granite piers and a cast-iron gate. A cobbled path leads to the chapel's front door. The chapel is considered the best-surviving example of a simple wayside chapel in Cornwall, notable for retaining all its original fittings, which are described as unusual and beautiful.