Capel Heol Dwr

This is a chapel with a lateral front, built in 1771 and significantly altered in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The front is rendered in painted stucco with a slate gabled roof, moulded eaves, and a late 19th-century copper ventilator on the ridge. The design is symmetrical, featuring a wide two-story facade with a central three-sided projection added in 1922 to serve as an organ chamber. This projection has a hipped slate roof, channelled stucco, and a plaque commemorating the organ and a memorial room for soldiers and sailors of World War I. Flanking the central bay are pedimented porches supported by two Tuscan columns with entablatures and pediments. The doorways have semi-elliptical heads with traceried fanlights and panelled doors. The facade incorporates channelled rustication, string courses, and large arched windows with late 19th-century Florentine tracery and roundels in the heads, set within moulded stucco surrounds. Small keystones are positioned above the windows. Oval plaques are located on either side of the central bay; one commemorating the chapel’s original construction in 1771 and the other the rebuilding in 1813 and restoration in 1891. Monuments from the 1830s are attached to the front wall.

The large interior contains a pulpit on the front wall and a gallery from 1831, featuring alternating broad and narrow timber panels supported by iron Corinthian columns, one of which is dated “1813”. Box pews are arranged to correspond with the gallery’s pattern, raking upwards at the back and sides. An earlier 19th-century pulpit is made of panelled mahogany with a splayed, fluted pedestal and concave corners, and incorporates two flights of curving stairs. A large organ from 1922 is situated behind the pulpit, housed within a large arched recess with ornate plaster moulding on corbels and featuring a panelled base and significant pipe racks. The ceiling, dating to 1891, is boarded and ribbed, with a large plaster rose within a rectangular panel and a decorative plaster border. Roundels depicting a crucifix and a dove are located above the entrance doors, likely dating to 1831. The facade windows, installed in 1892 by Farmiloe & Sons, feature lilies and roses of Sharon and bilingual text. Monuments include one to Rev. David Charles (died 1834), a Grecian design with an urn finial by Daniel Wainwaring, and another to John Wyndham Lewis (died 1895), in a matching style and signed by W Davies.