11018

 

II*  

Designated  

26/02/1981  

18/06/2004  

Tabernacle Chapel  

 

Carmarthenshire  

Llandovery  

 

 

276877  

234423  

 

Situated set back from road in own courtyard, c30m from junction with Water Street.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

Calvinistic Methodist chapel of 1836. The Methodists first met in the Queen Street houses vacated by the Independents in 1797 when they built the first Salem, until the first chapel was built on this site in 1804. The chapel was rebuilt in 1836 and refurbished in 1869 with new seats and pulpit platform. Renovated in 1906. A chapel house and schoolroom with stable were built in 1836 as 2 buildings flanking the entry, the house remains, altered, the schoolroom was demolished for the new vestry in 1891. Vestry and gates listed separately.  

Chapel painted stucco with slate gabled roof, deep eaves and gable verges, the eaves with Greek Revival mutules (as also on Llandingat House). Large chapel with Gothic windows and otherwise classical detail. Raised plinth, rusticated ground floor with moulded band over and channelled angle strips above. Four large pointed windows and 2 doors, windows are longer to 2 centre bays, the sills well below the moulded band. The windows have marginal lights and intersecting Gothic bars in heads, possibly reglazed in 1869. Coloured glass in margins and topmost pane with IHS motif. Moulded pointed hoodmoulds on short moulded corbels. Painted sills. Outer windows have heads considerably higher. Centre framed plaque inscribed 'Tabernacl Capel y Trefnyddion Calfinaidd Adeiladwyd MDCCCXXXVI'. Ground floor has 2 elliptical-arched doorways with radiating voussoirs and keystones breaking through band. Stone steps, broad C20 panelled double doors with plain fanlights. In centre, memorial plaque to Rev Rees Phillips (d 1854), the surround with Gothic panels to pilasters, cornice and panelled obelisk finials, ogee curved top to centre with urn and book inscribed Hebr. 12. 7. Corbelled sill. Coffin shaped slab inset in tarmac in front. W side is slate-hung with overhanging gable verges, 2-storey, 2-window, pointed windows above, square-headed below with C20 glazing. E side is similar but rendered.  

Large galleried interior. Gallery of 1869 is 5-sided with timber front in long panels with modillion cornice and modillion brackets beneath, gallery carried on 6 iron posts. Painted grained porches in angles have coloured glass in margins of overlights to doors and to margins of large square windows on inner sides facing pulpit. Cornices above beneath large panelled cases of organ divided in 2 and set over each porch, blocking gallery windows. Later C19 pine pews, later C19 set fawr with turned balusters and newels with ball finials. Painted grained pulpit platform of 1869 with panelled base, curved corners and top balustrade. Pulpit breaks forward, also balustraded with curved corners. Behind the pulpit a pointed-arched plaster recess. A very large pointed arch frames the 2 centre windows and has a blank traceried rose above, the ribs forming a Celtic cross. Narrow coved cornice. Ceiling has inner square with double border framed by moulded ribs, the border with square panels at corners and lozenges at centre of each side linked to centre roundel by moulded ribs. Centre has a spiral acanthus rose with vine trail in circular border. Entrance porches each have double doors to stairs to galleries, the stairs turning at right angles.  

Graded II* as a large town chapel in Georgian Gothic style with good interior detail including gallery of 1869.