18556

 

II*  

Designated  

18/07/1997  

18/07/1997  

Capel Mawr Presbyterian Chapel  

 

Isle of Anglesey  

Menai Bridge  

Menai Bridge  

 

255694  

371803  

 

Prominently sited on the corner of Chapel Street and New Street.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

The Calvinistic Methodist cause began in Menai Bridge c.1808. Meetings were first held in private dwellings throughout the town until 1838, when the first chapel was built. In 1856 most of the first chapel was demolished in order to build a new and more spacious replacement on the site. In 1860 the chapel house was built in the grounds and the gallery added, at a cost of £400. In 1869 the chapel was re-roofed and in 1871, Mr Richard Davies, Treborth, donated a pulpit and set fawr made of pitch pine at a cost of £100. In 1904 an extension was built to the rear of the chapel to accommodate a choir; at the same time the chapel had new pews and a pipe system for heating was installed. The interior may have been remodelled at the same time. In 1913 a pipe organ was built in the extension and the choir pews removed. There is chapel house in the grounds, and a schoolhouse on the opposite side of the street.  

Renaissance style chapel; 5-bays with 5-sided projecting bay (housing organ) at rear. Walls of rubble masonry faced with yellow brick in Flemish bond, with painted rendered dressings. Pitched slate roof with stone copings and lion's head bosses set behind copings at angles. Pedimented entrance elevation is strongly symmetrical with windows alternating with the 2 entrances; doorways in advanced segmentally pedimented architraves, the pediment detail repeated in window heads. Panelled doors under 2-pane stained glass lights with floral design, echoed throughout in top 2 panes of the tall 17-pane windows, those to front with corbelled sills. Sides of 5 similar windows with stressed painted render architraves and moulded eaves cornice. Rear elevation is pedimented as for front with advanced 5-sided projecting bay of 2 storeys. This has lower storey rendered with banded rustication, upper faced with brick with Tuscan pilasters each corner and rendered cornice and balustered parapet above, windows are 9 pane casements over long fixed lights, 4 in rear wall and 1 per storey to sides, panelled doors to left and right. Plaque on upper storey of rear wall, with rendered pedimented surround reads: ADDOLDY / METHODD CALFINAIDD / ADEILADWYD 1838 / AILADEILADWYD 1856 / ADNEWYDDWYD 1904 (Calvinistic Methodist Chapel - Built 1838 - Re-built 1856 - Extended 1904).  

Entrance leads through to vestibule with side entrances to main chapel and stairs leading to gallery either side. Doors at E end lead into vestry and stairs to right leading to organ gallery. Pitch pine pews arranged in U-shape with central bank, raking pews in U-shaped gallery with panelled front, supported on tapering cast iron fluted composite pillars. Set fawr in W end, raised by one step, rectangular with projecting reading desk in centre, front and sides of open round arches on square pillars with cone finials on end posts. Pulpit is square with projecting front inset panels with rounded arches and Corinthian pillars and projecting cornice. Flanked by 5 curving stairs with chamfered newels topped by cone finials. Behind the pulpit is a frieze of arcading with round arches, above which is the organ set into alcove through an eliptical arch on Tuscan pilasters. Highly elaborate plaster ceiling of 5 roof bays, each subdivided by moulded plaster ribs into quartrefoils and squares. Projecting obelisk bosses and decorated ventilation grilles with moulded cornice on capitals with painted floral frieze. Walls are plastered, painted with tongue and groove panelling to lower half under a moulded floral frieze and dado rail. Memorials; S wall, brass plaque to Jane Helen Rowlands, missionary, d.1955, vestibule with 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 war memorial plaques.  

Included as a fine example of a mid C19 chapel in Renaissance style, which has an exceptionally good later interior, with fine fittings and plasterwork.