Bethesda Baptist Church including vestry block attached to left

Bethesda Baptist Chapel with attached vestry block

This is a chapel built in rock-faced grey limestone with extensive Bath stone ashlar dressings, slate roofs and coped gables topped with stone finials. The building displays a large Romanesque winged gable facade with an advanced centre section and wings gabled on the side walls. The design is two-storey, with the lower ground floor separated by a prominent stringcourse featuring zigzag moulding that runs across the entire width.

The centre facade is framed by piers with ashlar quoins rising to stepped corbelling that follows the gable line. Below the corbelling sits a stepped small arcade of seven blank panels. Only the tallest centre panel has pierced ashlar infill with six column shafts and a hoodmould following the stepped arches. This frames the exceptional main rose window, a Gothic octofoil design with shaft-ribs, trefoil cusping and pierced spandrels below. The window sits beneath an ashlar over-arch carried on ashlar column shafts with red sandstone voussoirs above the hoodmould. The hoodmould extends as a stringcourse across to a pair of arched windows in each wing, each with three column shafts, stilted heads and red voussoirs. The wings have ashlar quoins and ashlar eaves corbelling.

At ground floor level, the centre features a pair of ornate gabled doorways with corbelled coped gables and richly carved Romanesque arches resting on fat angle shafts paired with central and side shafts, all topped with florid carved capitals. The carving of the capitals continues as a band across to the outer edge of the centre bay. Within each arch, double doors with shouldered heads are set within ashlar tympana, each pierced with three sexfoils. The wings have similar ground floor two-light windows to those above, but with only one column shaft between the lights.

The side walls are rendered and contain five windows. They feature cambered-headed windows below a raised band, arched windows above, and stringcourse linking the upper hoodmoulds. The gables of the wings sit over the nearest bay on each side. The rear has a shallow three-sided projection for the pulpit with two-three-two light arched windows and a coped gable topped with paired ashlar chimney shafts.

Attached to the front facade right is a screen wall with corbelling and a shouldered-headed door linking to the stone-clad end gable of an adjacent house on the adjoining street. To the left is the north gable end of the parallel vestry block, which features a shafted stepped five-light window set within walling recessed under stepped gable corbelling, topped with an ornate finial. The vestry has a punched rose window to the south with red stone voussoirs, a gable-end chimney and a glazed lantern on the ridge. Entry to the vestry is from a side street at an angle, through a coped stone wall with an arched window on each side of a cambered-headed panelled door with red stone voussoirs, below an ashlar scalloped cornice. To the left, an elders' room projects from the chapel with two arched windows in a rendered wall with parapet, beneath a canted-hipped slate roof. The rendered wall is ramped down and continued around the rear of the chapel.

The interior is broad with a deep-coved five-bay panelled ceiling featuring moulded ribs on carved stone corbels. Five diamond-shaped pierced timber ventilators are set into the ceiling. A three-sided gallery on nine cast-iron columns with furled leaf capitals runs around the interior. A timber cornice to the gallery with brackets over the columns sits beneath a fine continuous double-curved pierced cast-iron front of intricate design. Curved-ended brackets support the gallery. Pitch-pine pews are arranged in three blocks with doors. A dado rail features pierced quatrefoils. A stepped platform with canted sides and an open rail sits above an immersion font set beneath the floor. Further steps rise on each side of a broad pulpit platform with canted angles. The rail features column shafts and cusped arches with iron inserts, matched by similar column shafts on the stair rails.

Behind the pulpit is an unusual shallow three-sided apse set within a tall arch resting on ringed columns with carved capitals. The arch displays neo-Romanesque ornament with a hoodmould and ornate stops. The three-sided back features two-three-two light windows set high with coloured glass in arched lights with stilted heads, column shafts and carved capitals. The lower wall is Gothic-panelled with a quatrefoil frieze over long arched panels with cusped heads. The three-panel canted sides have one panel visible each side of a massive Gothic centrepiece. Two heavy ringed shafts with carved capitals carry steep gabled finials on each side of a centre taller gable. This gable features small roundels over a stepped triplet of three arched panels with thin column shafts and cusped heads, the centre panel significantly taller than the others.

The lobby contains a four-light Gothic window with column shafts, timber tracery and coloured glass. Stairs rise on each side with doors leading to the gallery. Coloured glass appears in the upper rose window and flanking windows. Gallery pews are curved, and a small organ of later 19th-century date backs onto the rose window. Doors from the ground floor on each side lead to small minister's and elders' rooms.

The vestry interior is five bays with arch-braced trusses on corbels. The walls feature recesses between piers with arch-braces to the wall-plates. A plaque commemorates Reverend Benjamin Davies, who died in 1816 and founded the chapel.