Capel Bethania

Capel Bethania is a chapel dating from 1906, built in an eclectic style incorporating Baroque, Beaux-Arts, and Palladian themes. The building is constructed of roughly dressed stone blocks in courses and stucco, with a slate roof featuring a tile ridge and brackets at the eaves. The prominent gable end faces north.

The symmetrical main facade is characterised by pairs of channelled pilasters at either end. A vast elliptical arch rises from the cornice, bearing the chapel name at its crown and a torch finial at the gable apex. The pilasters are topped with capitals featuring volutes and simple floral decoration. A large, round-arched fanlight sits centrally within a broken pediment, flanked by smaller, separate windows, creating a grand triple window composition. The central window has an ornate, cambered transom with flamboyant projecting scroll decoration, dividing a lower six-pane window from the fanlight. The flanking windows are four-pane with cambered heads, and feature smaller scrolls with shell decoration. Small lateral windows are set between the pilasters, each with a stucco oculus and keyblocks, and a rectangular light with a stucco architrave and pediment. A large stucco canopy shelters the entrance doorway, featuring a fanlight supported on substantial console brackets adorned with acanthus leaves and festoons. The double doors are six-panelled, grained, and feature a small decorative pediment as ornamental moulding on the frieze rail. Stucco cartouches on either side of the canopy display the date A.D. 1906. A chamfered plinth incorporates inset donor and foundation stones. The east and west sides are rendered, with a two-storey, five-window elevation; each window has six panes and a central mullion, with cambered heads. A schoolroom/vestry, dated 1941, is located to the rear southwest, featuring a cement-rendered porch.

The main entrance opens into a broad vestibule with a corniced ceiling and an encaustic tile floor. Staircases lead to galleries at either end, with doors providing access to the main chapel. These doors are grained, six-panelled (three tall panels above three smaller), and have simple chamfered mouldings. The large auditorium features fine painted decoration. The ceiling is deeply coved, with a honeysuckle frieze. The central ceiling is divided into eight boarded pitch pine panels, incorporating three inset ventilators decorated with pierced fleur-de-lys ornament. A three-sided gallery is supported by seven cast iron columns with stylised composite capitals. A moulded cornice, decorated with wheatsheaf and foliated ornament, runs above the gallery. The gallery has curved angles and a wooden front with pilasters separating ornamental cast iron panels decorated with delicate interlacing foliage. A clock is positioned in the centre gallery, opposite the pulpit. The pews are grained, with close boarded backs in both the central and side blocks, and are raked in the gallery. The high pulpit platform has curved steps on either side, while the deacons' seat in front has curved ends, close-boarded panels at the base with turned balusters in the upper panels, and a moulded top rail. The organ, bearing the makers’ name ‘Peter Conacher & Co. Huddersfield’, is housed within a monumental, flat-headed, shouldered recess, flanked by side pilasters with floral capitals.