7688

 

II*  

Designated  

26/10/1953  

18/06/2021  

Pentre Llifior Methodist Chapel  

 

Powys  

Berriew  

 

Pentre Llifior  

314711  

297780  

 

On the road from Berriew to Bettws Cedewain, 5km approx SW of Berriew village.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

Dated 1798, the chapel was the first Wesleyan Methodist preaching house to be erected in Montgomeryshire and North Wales. Accounts from 1798 suggest that the gallery had been built and provided with seats at that time. In 1870, a considerable sum of over £152 was spent on the chapel, £70 on carpentry. The work also included re-plastering the walls and replacement of windows. Work to restore the chapel commenced in 1998 culminating in 2012 when the 1964 lean-to porch was replaced by a new gabled Georgian-style porch.  

A small, simple chapel of brick under a slate roof, entered via the gable wall. There are central paired panelled doors within a gabled porch added in 2012. It is flanked by 2 paired segmentally headed lights with interlaced tracery and some coloured glass, above the doorway. Similar tracery is in the 2 similar windows of each side elevation, with panelled external shutters and blue brick sills of the later C19. A date-stone between the windows of the front wall is inscribed 'Wesley's Methodist Chapel 1798' (the 8 is painted over the original number, 7). There are 2 similar windows in right hand gable return.  

The interior is simple with plastered walls above a boarded wainscot and a plain flat modern ceiling slightly lower than the original and lower than the tops of the gallery windows. Central aisle between pews with doors to either side, set on a suspended floor probably of 1870. A bench has been added to the front of each set of pews. Similar pews are set at R angles either side of the pulpit, behind a plain communion rail. The polygonal pulpit has fluted panels and has ball finials crowning principal posts. The pews themselves are difficult to date, but whether or not they survive from the original building, they do retain a simple Georgian character. The pulpit and communion rail may date from 1870. The gallery has a plain panelled front carried on cast iron posts, and pews with fielded panels to the doors.  

Listed grade II* for its special historical interest in the establishment of the Methodist cause in Mid Wales, and for its special architectural interest as a very good and rare example of simple Georgian character in both the building and much of its furnishings.