22792

 

II  

Designated  

24/01/2000  

24/01/2000  

Providence Baptist Chapel and attached Manse  

 

Swansea  

Port Eynon  

Swansea  

Knelston  

246708  

188943  

 

Narrow roadside site at north side of the A4118 in the centre of Knelston village, 4km north of Port Eynon village. Attached manse to east. Burial ground to west. Low front wall to chapel and manse with iron railings and gates.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

Samuel and Hannah Wilson came to Fairfield Farm, Knelston from Pant Glas, Monmouthshire, in c1850. Hannah persuaded the Baptist Home Missionary Society of Glamorgan to sponsor the building of a chapel at Knelston, which was opened on the 10th of January 1858. Knelston became a centre of Baptist missionary work in Glamorgan under two early pastors, the Rev J G Phillips and the Rev David Evans. Mr Phillips (1858) had recently been ordained from Pontypool College and was appointed to missionary work in Glamorgan; his successor (whose gravestone gives his dates of ministry here as 1857-65) was appointed with similar responsibility for Gower only. He held a school in the chapel. The building debt was nearly paid off by the time of Mr Evans' death in 1865. In 1872 the Rev Silvanus Jones came to Knelston and lived in the manse 'which had been built at the side of the chapel'. He encouraged the Sunday school at Knelston chapel which flourished until superceded by a non-denominational village school established in 1874. The 1878 OS map indicates the absence of the present porch (which stands against the west gable wall), and the presence of small annexes at front and rear, now lost, suggesting a redesign of the chapel subsequent to that date.  

Small chapel lying parallel to the road, with the two-storey, three-window manse in tandem to the east. Rendered walls with projecting rusticated quoins and projecting plinth, all painted white. Slate roof to chapel and porch (upvc trim to verges) with decorative crest ridge tiles. Decorative tile finial at west apex. Two pointed windows with stone Y tracery and sills in the front and rear elavations and one in the porch gable to the west; coloured margin glazing. Small quatrefoil light in the apex of the chapel gable to the west and small trefoil light in the apex of the porch. Pitched slate roof and four-pane sash windows to the whitewashed manse.  

The chapel is entered by the west porch, with ledged, framed and battened double external doors. Double two-panel doors to interior. A tall, plain interior with two ranges of pews; simple pulpit at east with a curtained front and a curtain backdrop. Two-bay scissor beam roof with boarding on three purlins each side. Above the pulpit is a shield painted with the words 'Providence, Knelston, Gower, 1858'. Two small war-memorial plaques on side walls.  

A small rural chapel and adjoining manse with special interest as a missionary centre in C19 Glamorgan and Gower.