Penuel Baptist Chapel and attached schoolroom

Penuel Baptist Chapel

This chapel comprises a painted roughcast and stucco building with a slate roof, fronted by a striking two-storey elevation. The facade features a broad coped and shouldered gable with a finial and a keyed roundel set within the gable. Moulded stringcourses run across each floor level. The ground floor has broad channelled outer piers, which were altered to paired channelled piers on the first floor, linked by a minimal entablature with the stringcourse serving as cornice and a block above beneath the gable shoulder. The first floor contains two arched windows with early twentieth-century detailing, timber tracery, and stucco surrounds with pilaster jambs and arched shouldered moulded cornices. These windows are three-light variants on a Palladian design. A centre eared plaque is positioned between them. The ground floor displays two narrow windows in eared architraves and a centre doorcase with shouldered architrave, cornice and triple key, set forward from the channelled outer piers. The doors are double-panelled with a rectangular overlight. Side walls and the end wall feature similar arched windows, with two arched windows on the first floor of the end wall.

The interior is exceptionally broad and lofty, featuring exceptionally well-detailed woodwork dating to 1909-10, said to be made from Canadian redwood. The chapel is galleried on all four sides with an organ loft at the end. Deep raked side and rear galleries are supported on timber square-corniced piers arranged in three bays, with paired piers at each end. Tall white-painted corniced piers create an aisled effect by carrying a longitudinal three-bay arcade of basket-arches (flat with curved ends), the centre bay being double width. A similar arch spans across the organ loft with matching pilasters and a coved ribbed ceiling within.

The gallery fronts project forward with paired horizontal brackets over the piers and a panelled underside. Each gallery front features an intricate design of vertical panels, each containing three turned balusters, backed to three-quarter height with a moulded rail and open above. Pilasters between the panels have caps at three-quarter height with labels above, all beneath a moulded top rail. Broader panelled pilasters correspond to the ground floor piers. Similar quarter-round projecting sections occupy the angles to provide access to the organ loft.

The pews are arranged in two blocks with centre and outer aisles, with the outer half of each block canted. Inward-facing pews stand on either side of the pulpit. Bench ends feature turned balusters with flat tops. The gallery pews are simpler, with curved rear corners. A set fawr is formed by the front pews, with a centre table in front of the pulpit containing open small panels to the top rails. The pulpit is accessed by a short flight of steps from each side and features a fielded panel to the front with an open quarter-circle arch above, beneath a ramped rail. The pulpit front is canted-sided with a 1-3-1 bay arrangement: fielded panels below and open bays above with column shafts, shallow arched heads, and panelled pilasters with fluting above at the outer angles. A large centre bookrest is positioned on the pulpit. A fine, large free classical pulpit back stands against the organ gallery, arranged in 1-3-1 bays with panelled work, the centre raised with a semi-circular pediment, blind radiating bars, and concave curved pieces flanking. The large organ in the loft features a panelled classical base beneath a pipe-front of unpainted pipes.

A rear lobby contains an Art Nouveau leaded and coloured glass window of 1-3-1 lights with top-lights on either side of a recessed centre half-glazed door. The ceiling is flat with a boarded centre and plastered large panels behind the aisles.

Attached Schoolroom

An attached schoolroom of 1886 stands at the rear right corner of the chapel, constructed of squared rock-faced rubble with two bands at sill and window impost level, and a slate roof. This single-storey structure features four windows with tall arched heads. The outer windows are three-light variants, with two two-light windows between them, each with an arched head to every light and a terracotta hood following the line of the window heads. Black brick jambs frame the windows. The three-light windows have a taller blank centre light with a stilted arch rising under an eaves gable, one featuring a brick chimney. Marginal glazing bars and roundel glazing in the heads complete the fenestration. A black brick plinth runs along the base, with bands interrupted for the windows and red terracotta rope-mould set between two courses of black brick. The end wall continues these bands, with the sill band stepped up beneath a large Romanesque arched window. Over this window sits a large roundel above four arched lights, framed by black brick jambs and shafts, and topped with a red terracotta arched hood.

The schoolroom interior contains open roof trusses and a gallery at one end with long pierced cast-iron panels, though this gallery is now blocked by twentieth-century boarding.