Tirzah Baptist Chapel

Cadw's description

Location

In a lane off Station Road in the hamlet of Llanmorlais. Stone wall perimeter, with wrought iron railings on a low plinth wall to the front. Gate of similar design between cast-iron piers.

History

Tirzah is dated 1905. It was a daughter chapel of Trinity, Penclawdd, serving the local coalmining community of Llanmorlais, and was at first considered principally as a Sunday School. The original site lease from Sir Robert Armine Morris to Seth Protheroe Jones and others, trustees of Tirzah, is dated 1908, and gives permission to build to the value of £250. In 1931 the chapel acquired its independence from Trinity, and at the same period the trustees acquired the freehold of the chapel site.

Exterior

A small chapel with rendered exterior and slate roof with small finial at each end. The front is pedimented and has a plinth and rusticated quoins worked in the render. Central doorway with one window each side, all with keyed arches and rusticated jambs also worked in the render. Stone sills. Small metal ventilator beneath each window. The windows have timber mullions carried up to a Y at head, and timber glazing bars. Double doors with two-panel leaves and similar glazing bars in head. Sides and rear also rendered with slight plinth. The side elevations have segmental-headed window openings, timber mullion and transom windows with top ventilators, timber glazing bars. No windows in the rear elevation. the front carries the chapel name Tirzah in the pediment and the wording 'Baptist Church Built 1905' beneath, in raised lettering. Steps to door with steel handrail.

Interior

A neat and well preserved interior entered by a framed pine entrance porch with moulded cornice, double panelled doors to the interior below a transom with obscured glazing borrowed light above, and similar panelling and glazing at the sides of the porch.
The interior features a full-width combined pulpit and organ loft with single staircase at left, balustraded front with turned balusters, moulded dark-stained handrail and pierced decorative brackets, turned dark-stained newels at each end and framing the projecting pulpit. The pulpit projects with canted sides, has a moulded rail, round-headed panels with a Celtic Cross motif in the pierced panels, panel colonnettes, and a moulded base, all above a plain boarded plinth. At rear is the organ in a shallow round-headed recess decorated with pilasters and an arch, below which is the wording 'Enter into His courts with praise' painted red. Boarded dado each side.
The seating consists of school benches not fixed to the floor. The dado of the pulpit is continued around the chapel at lower height. The ceiling is boarded at collar beam level in four main panels decoratively stencilled at corners, the panels defined by ribs, and has a central lozenge containing a ventilator and narrow panels with ventilators at each end.

Reason for designation

An unusually well preserved small chapel of the early C20 religious revival period, originally serving the Llanmorlais mining community as a branch of an earlier established chapel.