Bethel Chapel and attached cottages [Rhoslwyn and Bethel House)

Cadw's description

Location

Situated by minor road junction at Rhos Isaf, the chapel and cottages have a low rubblestone wall with stone-on-edge coping to the front, the section in front of the chapel lower with slate coping and spear-headed railings; 3 iron gates.

History

Calvinist Methodist chapel, first built in 1836, remodelled and adjoining cottages added in late C19. The left of these (Rhoslwyn) formerly partly served as a village shop.

Exterior

Chapel and attached cottages. Simple classical style, rectangular plan chapel with gable end to road, flanked by lower and very slightly recessed one and a half-storey cottages running parallel with road. Roughcast rubblestone to road elevation and throughout to cottages; chapel has very roughly coursed rubblestone with buttered pointing to right return and is slate hung to left return and rear; slate roofs. Gable end of chapel has central 6-panel double doors under narrow overlight in projecting surround with moulded entablature, flanked by tall round-headed margin-light sash windows in moulded surrounds with keyblocks; continuous cill and impost bands. String course above is broken by moulded round-headed opening with keyblock containing oval-shaped window with spandrels; slate plaque above lettered "BETHEL/ 1836". Broken cornice to corners and to coped parapet gives impression of pediment to gable, which has painted plaster decoration to apex. Returns each have 2 square-headed margin-light sash windows behind cottages and 2 similar but narrower sash windows to rear gable end; brick chimney to left return astride ridge of left cottage. The 2 cottages are essentially mirror images of each other; gabled half-dormers to either side of central half-glazed doors, windows all originally 4-paned sashes, those to ground floor of right cottage (Bethel House) replaced by C20 windows and lower left of left cottage (Rhoslwyn) now with projecting C20 shop window; integral end stacks to both cottages, which also have single-storey lean-tos attached to gable ends, that to Rhoslwyn with a C20 window projection to the front.

Interior

Plain chapel interior has plastered ceiling with higher section to ridge and plain moulded cornice; plastered walls above tongue and groove boarded dado. Slightly raking pitch pine benches and simple set fawr, behind which is a blind segmental arch with the painted Gothic lettering "MYFIYWBARAYBYWYD" above and the words "DUW/ CARIAD/ YW" and "DUW/ A/ BYGOA", vertically and also in Gothic script with floral motifs, to left and right respectively. Bethel House has central C19 staircase with turned newel to bottom.

Reason for designation

Included as a well-preserved example of a late C19 Methodist chapel (of earlier C19 origins) with 2 contemporary cottages attached, forming a symmetrical and distinctive grouping suggestive of a deliberate piece of planning. The chapel has an unaltered late C19 interior.