Capel Mawr including associated School-room and forecourt railings

Capel Mawr is a large late-Victorian chapel in restrained Italianate style. Built of limestone with a symmetrical ashlared facade and a slate roof, half-hipped to the gable ends, with two metal louvres. The building is fronted by a four-bay, single-storey porch block advanced to the centre. This features a pair of round-arched entrances with flanking arched windows, projecting imposts and keystones. The doors are six-panel types with plain segmental fanlights. Flanking and end pilasters support a plain entablature with a moulded cornice, above which rises a columnar stone balustrade with moulded rail. The porch returns have similar arched windows, all with plain sashes and marginal glazing. On either side of these central entrances are further, square-headed entrances with plain pilasters supporting entablatures; doors match the others, with plain rectangular fanlights. To the left and right of these entrances are tall outer stair windows, arched and glazed like the porch windows, with corbelled sills, flush voussoirs and projecting keystones. The upper gallery floor contains four further similar arched windows with a continuous moulded label running the length of the facade. A modillion eaves cornice completes the upper section. The left gable end, facing Beacon's Hill, has three eight-pane sashes to each floor, with cambered heads and marginal glazing.

Adjoining the chapel at its northern corner, with its facade facing Beacon's Hill, is the School Room. This consists of a large hall raised above a basement storey with a high chamfered plinth. The School Room has an asymmetrical limestone ashlar facade with a moulded wooden cornice and hipped slate roof, with two metal louvres. The facade comprises five bays, with the second from the left advanced and gabled, featuring moulded bargeboards and an end chimney with simple capping. This bay contains a sixteen-light recessed sash window with a further three-light section above, a flat stone lintel and projecting sill. Above this is a stringcourse, continued onto the other bays as an eaves course, with the raised date 'AD 1892' to the gable apex. The flanking left bay and the two bays to the right have similar but narrower twelve-pane windows. The right-hand bay is recessed and has a narrow six-pane window and a recessed six-panel door to the return with moulded panels and a six-pane rectangular overlight. The basement has twelve-pane sashes with an entrance to the advanced bay, featuring part-glazed double doors with rectangular overlight.

The chapel and schoolroom are fronted by low forecourt walls of rough-dressed rubble with dressed, chamfered copings. These walls step down in stages from the upper to the lower end of Chapel Street and then turn at right angles to follow the line of descending Beacon's Hill to a point immediately beyond the schoolroom. At the upper end to the right of the chapel, and at the lower end opposite the schoolroom entrance, are stone gatepiers with chamfered bases and pyramidal capping stones. Opposite the chapel porch are a pair of larger, rusticated gatepiers with similar capping. Simple iron gates are fitted to these, together with a surviving stretch of similar railings sweeping from these piers down to the point where the chapel meets the schoolroom.

The entrance passage features a geometric pavement of counter-changed yellow, red and black tiles. The partition wall dividing the entrance passage from the chapel proper has dado boarding and a central window with stained glass above a simple World War II stone memorial. The chapel entrances lead off to the left and right and have part-glazed double doors with engraved and frosted glass and leaded glazing to the margins.

The chapel interior is of fine quality throughout, featuring pine joinery. A U-shaped gallery is supported on fluted cast iron colonnettes with foliated capitals, cantilevered out on scrolled brackets with modillion decoration and a panelled face with moulded surmounting rail. Six tiers of pew seating occupy the main and gallery floors, with the gallery seating raking. The Set fawr (seating enclosure) features curved rails with a panelled lower section and surmounting decorative iron arcading; it has turned balusters and newels with geometric finials. A central semi-octagonal pulpit with flanking curved stair approaches is detailed similarly. The pulpit has a panelled front with pierced decoration, fluted columns and foliated capitals. Raised behind the Set fawr and pulpit is a large organ with a turned gallery balustrade. Its tripartite upper section has half-round projections flanking a wide, depressed-arched central section with pierced spandrels, a shallow pediment with pierced decoration above a central console with flanking panelled lower sections.

The ceiling contains fifteen panels, five with floral centrepieces, and two cast iron decorative ceiling vents.