Abergavenny Baptist Church

Abergavenny Baptist Church is a large rectangular chapel built in the 18th century in a free Northern Italian Romanesque style. It is constructed from snecked bullnose local brown sandstone, with pale Bath limestone quoins and dressings, and natural slate roofs. The chapel is oriented with a gabled front facing the street, flanked by two three-stage towers. These towers have steep hipped roofs with bell-cast and wrought-iron cresting, and clasping buttresses treated as superimposed pilasters in a semi-classical manner. The ground stage of the towers features paired lights with colonettes and stiff-leaf capitals, a heavy cornice band above. The second stage is taller with a lancet window and oculus above. The top stages are designed as bell stages with open Romanesque stilted arches. The central gable features arcading based on Lombardic Italian models, below which a large eight-light rose window is set within an arched surround with oculi in the lower spandrels. A single-storey, open porch has round arched doorways with Romanesque shafts and stiff-leaf capitals, two openings to the front and one to each side, and double entrance doorways with pierced tympana, leading to panelled doors. The side elevations have six tall recessed bays across two clear storeys, separated by thin pilaster buttresses. There is a bracketed cornice, enriched as floral capitals on the tower buttresses. The first floor features pairs of round arched windows with central columns, while the ground floor has pairs of square headed windows. The north-west end bay is narrower with only one window on each floor, and the south-east end bay features the return of the towers, with an arched light on the ground stage and upper stages mirroring the main front. A lower projection to the rear (north-west) provides vestries and has a gable chimney. The building is now in two storeys, with a floor at the former gallery level. The ground floor is now used as school rooms and is very plain, while the upper floor serves as the chapel. The original tiered seating remains, located on the former balcony. An organ recess is present, and parts of the former gallery balustrade have been reused in the organ screen. The roof remains unaltered, featuring a coved and panelled design with a central recessed area, with main ribs supported on large console brackets. Stained glass is present in the rose window. A fine organ is housed within the arched recess, the arch inscribed "GOD IS A SPIRIT WORSHIP HIM IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH."