Neath Mission Hall

Neath Mission Hall

The Mission Hall is an Arts-and-Crafts style building of brick with stone dressings, featuring lintel and sill bands and a slate roof hipped to the front. The side and rear walls are of rubble stone. The front elevation is divided into three bays by pilasters. The central bay contains a pair of recessed doorways behind original iron gates, topped with keyed segmental stone heads and projecting hood moulds. Each doorway has a half-glazed panel door beneath a small-pane segmental overlight. A lower link on the left side, between the Mission Hall and the adjoining Lesser Hall, contains a similar entrance with matching doorway and iron gates; this link has a flat roof concealed behind a coped gable with original rainwater goods.

The outer bays of the Mission Hall front contain two small-pane windows with moulded transoms. Above the sill band are foundation stones laid by several individuals, including John Pugh and Seth Joshua. The upper level features a wide six-light window in the central bay, continued by three lights in each outer bay to create a continuous glazed strip across the front, giving the building a distinctly secular character. The eaves are deep and dentilled.

The right-hand side wall is partly rendered following the removal of a formerly attached building. The six-window side walls have segmental brick heads. On the right side are two tiers of T-shaped wood-framed windows with coloured leaded lights. On the left side, the less-visible windows above the link have been replaced with plastic units. The walls curve around to the rear, which has further segmental-headed windows and a projection housing the organ with the minister's room beneath it.

The earlier chapel, known as the Lesser Hall, stands to the left, set back from the street behind dwarf stone walls from which original railings have been removed. It is built of rubble-stone walls under a slate roof. The cement-rendered gable-end front is in simple classical style with round-headed openings. Two panel doors with overlights occupy the centre, flanked by wood-framed fixed windows, with a foundation stone between them recording Davies as architect and Thomas & Cox as the builders. Similar windows flank triple round-headed windows at the upper level which light the former gallery. The rear wall contains two round-headed windows with wooden Y-tracery.

The Mission Hall interior was originally designed as a single undivided space, though an entrance vestibule and a second minister's room were created within it in the latter half of the twentieth century. The interior retains its original parquet floor, boarded wainscot, and plastered walls. The ceiling comprises large boarded panels with small round cast-iron ventilator grilles. The main hall was designed without pews to accommodate the maximum number of people at meetings, a feature distinguishing mission halls from other non-conformist places of worship. The three-sided raked gallery, standing on cast-iron piers with an ornate openwork cast-iron front, is furnished with pews. Closed-string staircases with a quarter-turn at the bottom, featuring turned balusters and square newels, flank either side of the entrance and lead to the gallery, which is accessed by double half-glazed doors.

A raised dais occupies the main floor, with a pulpit incorporating brass railings on twisted balusters behind it. Raked pews for the choir stand behind the dais. Further back, within a recess, is an organ installed in memory of Frank Joshua (after 1920), bearing a nameplate for Henry Salter & Sons, Neath. Windows flanking the organ recess contain stained glass commemorating Frank Joshua, his brother Seth, and Dr R. Davies (pastor 1926–1942), depicting various scenes with Christ in a nineteenth-century style. Curved corridors flanking the dais lead through double doors to the minister's room at the rear, which features simple panel doors, boarded wainscot, and a painted fireplace surround.

The link connecting the Mission Hall and Lesser Hall is top-lit with hipped lanterns and has a quarry-tile floor and boarded wainscot. The Lesser Hall interior is now unremarkable, with a false ceiling inserted.