22502

 

II  

Designated  

20/10/1999  

10/02/2004  

Calfaria Baptist Chapel  

 

Carmarthenshire  

Cilymaenllwyd  

Whitland  

Login  

216512  

223388  

 

Situated on a SE facing hillside on the W side of the Afon Taf valley some 200m W of Login.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

Baptist chapel of 1877 by George Morgan, in his characteristic Romanesque style. It replaced a chapel of 1828, and cost £1,200.  

Chapel, coursed rock-faced grey rubble stone with Bath stone dressings. Slate roof and coped gables with kneelers. Romanesque style, gable front of 3 bays, 3 large arches, the centre broader and stilted, on 4 piers with ashlar flush rustication and moulded capitals. Arches are flush ashlar with bicolour voussoirs above. In gable a small roundel with pierced quatrefoil. Centre arch has big octofoil ashlar rose window with bicolour voussoirs over double panelled doors with trilobe fanlight, in ashlar porch with heavy columns, trilobe arch and coped gable. Columns have carved capitals and gable has inscribed 'Built 1828 Calfaria Rebuilt 1877'. Side walls are 2-storey, 4-window with cambered headed windows below and arched above, linked by impost band. Ashlar flush surrounds with bicolour voussoirs. Glazing is C20 plastic copying intricate original pattern with lozenges up centre of each window and horizontal bars. Flush angle quoins, ashlar eaves course.  

Ceiling has arch-braced collar trusses on corbels, brattished wall-plate and plaster panels to sloping sides and across at collar level. Pierced timber lozenge ventilators to centre. Three-sided gallery on iron columns with furled leaf capitals. Gallery front projects on carved brackets, with panelled underside, moulded cornice below frontal of vertical boarding under long cast-iron panels, to a pattern of crosses in quatrefoils. Curved gallery angles, raked and curved gallery pews. Coloured glass in rose window. Main pews are pitch-pine, in 3 blocks, with boarded backs and shaped bench ends. Dado rail around walls with pierced quatrefoils. Plain 3-sided set fawr. Pulpit platform has steps each side, 2 bays to platform each side with open arches and scrolled iron inserts. Pulpit front projects with 2 plain arched panels. Gothic newel and corner posts with chamfering and pyramid caps. Behind the pulpit is a big plaster arched feature, a main arch with shafted narrow side arches, the column shafts with carved capitals, and the arches to a thick half-round profile, and an outer arch overall. Between heads of the inner and outer arches is a roundel, and there is an overall arched hoodmould on corbels. Marble centre memorial to the Rev D S Davies, d 1917. Entrance lobby has 3-light leaded and coloured glass window and canted sides each with double door.  

Listed for its special architectural interest as a well-detailed work of one of the leading Welsh chapel architects.