Capel Saron and attached Chapel House

Cadw's description

Location

Situated at a junction of minor roads some 1.8 km south-east of Pont Dolanog. Stone walls to road with Victorian letterbox. The chapel and house are approached from the crossroads corner of the site.

History

Early C19 Wesleyan chapel and house, of a single build. The chapel is dated 1827 and its interior was refitted in the late C19; the interior must however always have been entered from one side, retaining the traditional long-wall entrance. The domestic part is an interesting retention of the lobby-entrance principle in a single-bay house.

Exterior

The chapel and cottage are of very simple late-vernacular character in one range, with their long wall to the front, the house to left. The whole building is in axe-dressed uncoursed stone with a slate roof and tile ridge; end stone stack serving the house. Some heavy rock-faced cornerstones.

The chapel has a big 12-pane sash-window with margin glazing and stone voussoirs to its left (central to the whole range) and a door to right in a large porch. This has stone side walls, a late C19 timber-boarded gable with square- or quatrefoil-pierced bargeboards and a timber finial. Bench seats within and 6-panel door. The right end wall of the chapel has an arched window with stuccoed head and marginal bars to sides and foot of glazing. The rear is roughcast with a six-pane window with side margin bars.

The house has its simple boarded door to left and a casement-pair to each storey to right, the lower openings cambered-headed with stone voussoirs. Rear roughcast. Casement pair to first storey at rear. End wall also roughcast, with ground storey door and window together, the door within a corrugated iron porch. The masonry of the house is bound with wrought iron ties at two levels.

Interior

Two-bay chapel interior with mid-truss boxed in. Late C19 pews and pulpit, the pulpit with canted front with carved panels, decorative baluster sides and steps, decorative front rail. Ball finials to carved newels. Wall recess with moulded arch. Raking floor with pews in two blocks, plus pews each side of the pulpit. Boarded dado with decorative top, carried up at rear of pulpit.

Reason for designation

An early C19 house and very small chapel built in simple vernacular manner, planned as one and surviving remarkably unaltered.