Bethania Calvinistic Methodist Chapel

Bethania Calvinistic Methodist Chapel

A chapel built in brown rock-faced coursed stone with red sandstone dressings. The front elevation is dominated by a large-scale gable with outer pilasters, cornice, and pedimental finish. The composition features four arched upper windows above a slightly projecting ground floor centrepiece with a doorway flanked by lower arched windows. Red stone dressings and quoins mark the pilasters, while the gable displays an arched small light with keystone above a recessed circular date plaque, flanked by recessed triangular panels. A moulded cornice with dentils runs below the frieze, linking to pilaster dentil capitals, with red sandstone panels beneath. A string course crosses the pilasters at ground floor level.

The first floor windows have moulded stilted arches, keystones, moulded impost bands, and flush quoins. The glazing is unusual, featuring large roundels in the window heads above sashes with coloured glass margins, set on stone sills. The ground floor projection is gabled above the doorway, with a moulded verge continued as cornice on each side under a blocking course. A large arched doorway at the centre has a moulded surround and moulded arched hood with carved keystone. Windows flanking the doorway have linked hoods and smaller keystones. Double panelled doors with radiating bars in the fanlight are paired with small sashes either side, all with fixed fanlights and coloured glass margins.

The side walls are rendered in two storeys with five windows, featuring arched windows above flat-headed openings with marginal glazing bars and a first floor sill course. One side wall has been replaced in plastic. A schoolroom lies behind the chapel.

The broad interior is fitted in early twentieth-century manner. The ceiling features a cornice, panelled plaster border, timber border with six pierced vent roundels, plaster main section with central plaster rose and thin timber ribs, and two smaller roses. The pulpit end has a very large recess intended for an organ, with pilasters, cambered head, keystone, frieze with rosettes, and top cornice merging into the chapel cornice.

Three-sided galleries rest on seven iron columns with florid capitals and shaft rings positioned just above pew height. The columns were manufactured by Hall & Smith of Brierley Hill. The gallery fronts are constructed of pitch-pine and hardwood with curved angles, deep cornices beneath paired horizontal moulded panels divided by panelled piers, moulded top cornices and rails.

Pews are arranged in three blocks, with the outer ones canted. Inward-facing pews stand each side of the set fawr, which has pitch-pine panelling with vertical sections below horizontal panels and fluted newels with turned finials. Similar fine panelling appears behind the platform and in the pulpit recess, with hardwood cornice beneath the top row of narrow horizontal panels.

The broad ornate platform features balustraded stairs rising on each side with heavy turned newels and turned vase finials. The pulpit is very ornate with canted angles that break forward, displaying two front panels and one panel to each canted side with figured wood panels, hardwood labels above, and panelled pilasters with carved capitals to the front two bays. A deep moulded hardwood cornice runs across the top. Short returns on each side have cornices above stubby balustrading, with short balustrade lengths extending to the stair heads. Three panelled seats with moulded armrests stand behind.

Gallery pews are steeply raked at the entrance end. All arched upper windows feature plaster hoodmoulds. The lobby has an encaustic tile floor with right-angle stairs on each side, two 6-panel doors, and a double 3-light leaded transom window incorporating some coloured glass.

Behind the chapel are a vestry and schoolroom separated by glazed timber partitions.