Pontrhydyrun Baptist Church

Pontrhydyrun Baptist Church

A Baptist church of painted stucco with ashlar dressings and a low-pitched slate roof in classical style, dated 1836. The southeast temple front features a moulded pediment with a shaped plaque bearing the date, and a plain frieze below. The two-storey front is framed by paired ashlar angle pilasters on a low ashlar plinth.

The first floor contains three large arched windows set in arched recesses with ashlar sill bands, the centre one slightly larger than the others. The ground floor has a centre square-headed door in a moulded plain architrave, flanked by large square-headed windows in moulded shouldered architraves. The door is set within a fine broad ashlar porch with two Ionic columns, pilaster responds with plain moulded capitals, and a full entablature with cornice to a flat roof. The porch stands on two stone steps with flagstones within, and contains large double panelled doors.

The four-window sides are framed by two similar ashlar pilasters at each end bay. Long arched windows set in arched recesses with sill bands broken at the pilasters run the length of each side. The frieze continues around the building, rendered in ashlar on the northeast side, beneath overhanging eaves treated as a moulded cornice. All windows are renewed in uPVC, reproducing the original very small panes and radiating-bar heads.

A large schoolroom of 1904, altered in the 20th century, is attached across the rear northwest. It is stuccoed, two storeys with a hipped roof and flat eaves. The northeast end wall is painted and displays a big recessed three-light Palladian stair window to the left and a two-window range to the right. The rear northwest is unpainted, comprising five bays plus two additional bays to the right, with a high plinth, long ground floor windows, and shorter upper windows. All windows have been replaced in uPVC.

Interior

The interior has a flat ceiling, possibly 20th-century, divided into a grid of squares with applied small ornate pierced roses. A coved cornice runs around. An end wall gallery sits on a single thin iron column, probably early 19th-century, carrying a moulded beam supported at each end on a late 19th or early 20th-century pierced curved iron bracket. A far-projecting moulded timber cornice extends beneath ornate cast-iron frontal work with fluting to the convex curved solid base and pierced acanthus pattern to the concave-curved upper part, possibly by Macfarlane of Glasgow and dating to the late 19th or early 20th century.

Late 19th-century pitch-pine pews with roll-moulded tops are arranged in three blocks fronting a very large late 19th-century oak platform pulpit. The broad low platform has steps up each side and end balustrades with turned newels and balusters. Fielded panelling covers the platform front and back. The long front has a top cornice with fluted frieze over two tiers of panels, with square corner sections and a long projecting centre with quadrant curved angles each side of a four-bay front flanked by fluted pilasters. A very large centre book-rest sits atop. A panelled long base is overhung by the centre projection. Behind the pulpit is a large plaster arch on the end wall with thin pilasters, console caps, and a moulded thin arch. Half-glazed doors to the rear schoolrooms flank the pulpit to left and right. A stepped plinth in front of the pulpit conceals the baptistery.

The entrance lobby features a flight of stairs to the gallery on the right, plain with turned balusters and square newels. The gallery carries an organ of 1877 by Vowles of Bristol.

The schoolrooms occupy two storeys to the rear, with kitchen and toilet facilities in a block to the left.