Baptist Chapel

Baptist Chapel

A simple Nonconformist chapel dating from around 1821, located in Hullavington. The chapel is a small-scale, one-roomed building of coursed limestone rubble with a half-hipped roof covered in Cotswold stone slates. It is rectangular in plan, oriented north-south, with a later single-storey vestry (built after 1842) attached to the east side.

The entrance is to the south, featuring a 19th-century six-panel flush door in a dressed limestone surround with a flattened arched top. The entrance porch is constructed of coursed limestone rubble with dressed limestone quoins to the front elevation and a flat corrugated metal roof. Above the doorway is a single pointed arched window in a dressed limestone surround, divided into two lights by Y-shaped iron tracery. The western elevation has two similar windows; the eastern elevation has one.

Interior: The chapel has timber tongue and groove panelling to a height of approximately one metre around all four walls, rising to about two metres in the centre of the northern wall, which marks the probable site of the removed pulpit. A timber gallery at the southern end is raised on two moulded timber columns and is fronted with timber raised and fielded panels. It is accessed by a simple straight stair with turned balusters. The floor towards the northern end may retain remains of a baptismal font for immersion. The attached vestry was heated by a small fireplace (now removed), with the chimney installed through the depth of the external wall, emerging at the north-east corner of the chapel.

Subsidiary Features: The chapel plot is enclosed by a dry stone wall approximately one metre high, with two small areas on the northern and eastern sides containing 19th-century headstones marking burials.

History: The chapel was erected in 1821 and held in trust for Baptists and Independents. It appears on the 1842 tithe map for Hullavington. It is one of three Nonconformist chapels surviving in the village, making it a significant focus for Nonconformism in the early to mid-19th century, particularly given that an earlier chapel (from 1697) was in use as a school from 1818 to 1842, and a second chapel was not constructed until 1843. The building fell out of use in 1927 and was subsequently used for agricultural storage until 2006.