Capel Mawr, Sunday School and railed steps to chapel forecourt

Capel Mawr, Sunday School and Railed Steps to Chapel Forecourt

A rectangular two-storey chapel in Romanesque style with a lower L-shaped Sunday School and vestry set back in a courtyard to the right. The chapel is built of regularly coursed and snecked rubblestone with granite dressings to the front elevation; the sides have less regularly coursed rubblestone. The roof is slate.

The front elevation is approached by steep flights of steps with ashlar-coped rubble walls topped by cast-iron railings, decorative lamp standards and an overthrow. The facade features rusticated pilaster strips to the corners and a boldly projecting cornice and finials to the gable. The composition is dominated by a central Romanesque-style rose window with eight polished shafts and capitals in a round-headed recess with rusticated voussoirs, imposts and keystone. Above eaves level, a blind serliana with keyed and moulded cornice frames the inscription "1884 / CAPEL / TREFNYDDION / GALFINAIDD / TALYSARN". On either side of the rose window are paired round-headed windows with polished column-shafts and keystones containing narrow eight-paned glazing bar sashes with margin lights.

The ground stage has a full-width porch with a lean-to roof, hipped to slight projections at the corners and centre, the latter forming a canted bay. A continuous plinth, cill and moulded impost bands run across the porch, which has narrow sashes with margin lights in round-headed openings to the front. Six-panel doors sit in moulded round-headed archways with keystones on either side of the canted bay.

The five-bay side elevations have two tiers of windows: round-headed openings with raised cills, fitted with twentieth-century replacement windows to the upper level and square-headed sixteen-paned sashes to the lower level. The rear gable has two round-headed glazing bar sashes on the first floor and another window to the apex.

The Sunday School and vestry is built of squared slate slabs under a slate roof, hipped to the southern end which projects slightly at right-angles on the west. It is a single storey with a later range at right-angles to the west on the north, forming a basic L-plan. The west wall of the main range has three sixteen-paned sashes with slate cills to the left of the hip-roofed projection and another to the front wall of the projection. A lean-to porch sits on the north wall of the projection in the angle with the main range, which has a rendered ridge stack directly above. The later range on the north has two four-paned sashes and brick ridge stacks.

Interior

An entrance lobby with vestry to the front contains a staircase to the gallery with an open string, turned balusters and newels. The chapel itself, completed in 1884, retains all its original fittings and furnishings in pitch pine. The walls are plastered and the flat panelled and boarded ceiling features neo-classical plaster decoration including guilloche patterning to the ribs and gilded pendants at the intersections of the square panels. The centre of the ceiling is occupied by a larger panel with a ceiling rose comprising an outer circle of eight plaster panels with Greek key ornament and paterae to the panels and anthemion ornament in the spandrels. A circular feature at the centre has egg-and-dart decoration. Similar but smaller features are found to the centre of the central panels to north and south of the main panel, from which ventilators hang electric lights (formerly gas).

The gallery on three sides is supported by fluted cast-iron columns with cast-iron brackets and curves to the corners with panelling to the front, projecting into square panels with colonettes at regular intervals. The base of the gallery front has a continuous dentil cornice above which are brass gas brackets. Tiered panelled benches with low dividing screens and doors occupy the gallery ends.

Gallery windows have moulded architraves and console brackets; the rose window contains stained glass. Directly beneath in front of the organ is an original arched panelled pulpit on an octagonal pedestal with turned newel and twisted balusters to the stair. A similar detail with a dumpy turned balustrade frames the railed enclosure below. Original raked seating in the form of low box pews covers the ground floor throughout. The Sunday School has nineteenth-century benches and a reading desk.