Bethany English Baptist Church and attached Sunday School is a Grade II listed building in the Caerphilly local planning authority area, Wales. First listed on 22 October 1999. Church.

Bethany English Baptist Church and attached Sunday School

WRENN ID
buried-hearth-starling
Grade
II
Local Planning Authority
Caerphilly
Country
Wales
Date first listed
22 October 1999
Type
Church
Source
Cadw listing

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Description

The building comprises a chapel and an attached Sunday School, constructed in the 18th century. The chapel has a steeply pitched gable front built of snecked rubble stone, with rockfaced stone to the staircase bays, ashlar dressings, and a Welsh slate roof with ridge ventilators. Its front elevation features paired round-headed gallery windows with keystones, and a roundel above the datestone. A stepped porch bay contains paired round-headed doorways with horizontally panelled doors and a wrought iron guard to the parapet. Projecting on either side are five-sided staircase bays with conical roofs surmounted by metal finials, billet-moulded eaves, and rounded-headed windows with keystones to the front faces at first floor level, and square-headed windows below, with moulded plaques between. Coloured glass in decorative leading is featured in the windows, which have moulded lintels. The six-bay side chapel elevation incorporates round-arched gallery windows above and cambered-arched windows to the ground floor, each bay delineated by a painted rendered pilaster intersecting with a continuous hoodmould over the ground floor windows, all with moulded keystones and shallow sills. The Sunday School wing, attached to the rear, is primarily constructed of red and yellow brick with horned sash windows to seven ground floor bays and clerestory lights above. This building demonstrates group value through its contribution to the area’s wider religious heritage.

The interior of the chapel is long, with a four-sided raked gallery featuring a painted, panelled front and bracketed soffit, supported by six columns on each side. A choir gallery has a painted, balustraded front stepped down in front of the pipe organ; behind are quarried lights leading to the Sunday School. Beneath the gallery is a wide, polished wood pulpit enriched with round-arch mouldings to the top tier and panelled below, which is a copy of that within Spurgeon Tabernacle in London. The platform has a polished wood rail and decorative wrought iron balusters, with a baptistry located underneath. There is no set fawr. Part-glazed swing doors lead to the Sunday School on either side. Plaques commemorating the church's ministers, including founder Margaret David, are displayed on the walls. The interior features scribed render, a boarded dado, and angled pews. The ceiling has coving and 18 decorative wooden panels within a frame incorporating a central rosette with a ventilator. A fine vestible showcases decorative plasterwork, while the staircases in the two turrets feature turned balusters and decorative newel posts, with decorative glazing to the interior doors. Side windows are 6-pane with one pull-down casement, and some incorporate coloured glass.

The schoolroom hall to the rear is two storeys high. One side is defined by the rear choir and organ gallery supported on tall cast iron columns, while the other incorporates a balustraded gallery with boarded partitions for the schoolrooms; the walls are decorated with painted text. The ground floor includes half-glazed wooden partitions, each with a central door and windows either side that can be raised to enlarge the hall. The floor is made of woodblock.

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