Bethlehem Baptist Chapel including Vestry and Front Boundary Walls

Rubble ironstone construction. Slate roof with projecting eaves and bargeboards. Handsome symmetrical lateral facade with windows to both storeys. Upper storey has tall round-arched window to right and left, stone voussoirs, and 6-pane C20 metal window with leaded panes. Unusual oval window to upper centre with stone voussoirs and radiating glazing: lowest voussoir dated 1830. Ground floor has central round-arched doorway, stone voussoirs, C20 panelled doors with radiating fanlight. Segmentally headed window each side with glazing as above, stone voussoirs. Above door is small oval tablet, with carefully radiated voussoirs inscribed: ‘Bethlehem Dec. 25th 1830’ Blank right gable. Rear elevation with two tall segmentally-headed windows. To right is later lower vestry with hipped roof. Upper floor has marginally glazed sash window to left, and panelled door to right; stone lintels. Door is reached via short flight of steps cutting across front wall of chapel. Boarded ground floor door to left. First floor of left end has sash window as above; door below with small window to right.

Front boundary walls of rubble construction. Central square gatepiers of hammer-dressed limestone with slab copings; paired iron gates with scrolled end-posts, dog-rail with curved bracings above: spear finials. Wall continues some 20 metres to the right as retaining wall of sloping cemetery. To left is short roadside section, with wall ramped up each end; terminating moulded stone coping to left, before wall returns to meet steps to vestry door.

Largely of 1830. Three-sided gallery on plain iron columns; front with tall panels, with deeply coloured ‘grained’ finish. Gallery benches with railed backs. Box-type pews with grained finish: pews in side bays are arranged laterally: to right side is central opening for former fireplace (grate removed, but chimney breast remains). Later C19 pulpit of platform type: bullnosed front with turned balusters and central panelled lectern, side stairs with similar balusters and turned newels. Panelled pedimented timber frame behind pulpit with fluted pilasters. Flat ceiling with square central wooden ventilator: satellite ventilators to corners.