Capel Bethesda

Cadw's description

Location

Situated on the N side of a minor road on Mynydd Bodafan some 2.5km SW of Brynrefail.

History

1897 small chapel and house in line. A late example of the type retaining the characteristic elements of the region's agricultural settlement. Mynydd Bodafon is an area of scattered C19 settlement, mostly created by encroachment on what had been common land until the 1860s, and the chapel is important testimony to this small, informal rural settlement.

Exterior

House and chapel in line, plain roughcast with slate roof, gable end cappings. Chapel has 2 x 4-pane sashes on front and gabled porch with plain boarded door on end wall right. House to left has door under cambered head and 4-pane sash each floor; painted brickwork stack to left gable end. Small flat-roofed outshot to rear.
Enclosure wall to front in white-washed rubble with monlith gatepiers and double ironwork gates.

Interior

Simple interior without gallery but retaining painted dado with panelled pulpit platform and pews grouped around.

Reason for designation

Included as an unspoilt and dignified rural chapel of a once common type in the agricultural communities of Anglesey. The building retains the simple, traditional character of a chapel built to serve the former squatter settlement on Mynydd Bodafon.