23524

 

II*  

Designated  

18/07/2000  

14/08/2003  

Capel Seion including Railings  

 

Powys  

Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant  

Oswestry  

Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant village  

312231  

326099  

 

Situated on the N side of the square just W of the bridge in the centre of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

Chapel in highly accomplished Arts and Crafts Gothic style, 1904, by Shayler & Ridge of Oswestry. F.H. Shayler was architect of some notable Edwardian public buildings in Wales including the Institute at Newtown and the Town Hall at Llanidloes. The original building has been altered by replacing battlements and a recessed needle spire on the right tower with an overhanging pyramid roof. The cause here was established by 1804. A woollen mill was used as the meeting place from c1818. A new chapel was built in 1833-4, altered 1845 and 1869, and a schoolroom and chapel house added 1892. The rebuilding of 1904 incorporated some of the old building.  

Chapel in coursed rock-faced squared sandstone with tooled dressings, red sandstone window tracery and slate roofs. Imposing street front of broad gable with broad 6-light window set back behind flat-roofed embattled porch framed by two squat towers with slate pyramid eaves roofs, the towers of varied size, detail, and placing. High plinths. Coped main gable has slightly humped copings to shoulders. Broad segmental arch over 6-light window with cusped heads to main lights and 12 tiny cusped lights in arch. Arch has a heavy roll-moulding. Porch below is subtly asymmetrical, parapet has 3 shallow crenellations left, 2 to right, each side of a shallow curve echoing cambered head of doorway below. Triple moulding of door head dies into chamfered jambs. Panelled double doors with tiny panes in heads. At each side of door is a tiny cusped lancet. The two towers differ in size, the right tower larger, continuous with front wall, the left tower set back against left corner of main chapel. Both are windowless to ground floor with openings to squat top stages under overhanging pyramid roofs. Right tower has plinth, battered base, and deep-recessed cambered-headed 4-light windows above, red stone with cusped lights. Roll-moulded cambered arch. The recess has chamfered sides and outer tower angles are chamfered, as these were the bases of octagonal angle piers that flanked a low parapet , with needle spirelet behind, replaced by the pyramid. Left tower is square, with tiny cusped lancet to front and another at mid height to outer side. Four-bay sides divided by stepped buttresses with overhanging roofs. Deep recessed cambered-headed traceried windows each floor, 2-light below and 3-light above, under roll-moulded arches. Red stone windows with cusped lights. Roof on left is continued from pyramid roof of stair tower, roof on right abuts rear of tower. To right of right side is lower 2-storey vestry and organ chamber with similar red stone 2-light each floor and blank gable end with end-wall chimney. Attached iron railings to front and right side, those at front more elaborate with 4 stone cross-gabled piers.  

Front porch with part-glazed timber screen each end to gallery stairs. Two doors into chapel, with glazed top panels. Broad interior with 4-bay low-pitched sloping ceiling, and three trusses with moulded brattished tie-beams and vertical posts with trefoil-cusped arcading between. Ceiling slopes have exposed double purlins and rafters, plastered between. Arched braces to tie-beams, with pierced spandrels, on stone corbels. Windows have exposed stonework within. Four-sided gallery curved at angles on 6 plain iron columns, made by Macfarlane & Co. of Glasgow. Gallery front has simple cornice under continuous vertical panels with blind Gothic tracery, and moulded top rail with brass handrail. Steeply raked gallery pews with shaped bench ends and boarded panelled backs. Tudor-arched recess on fourth side for large organ by Norman & Beard 1908. Stained pine pews with shaped bench-ends in 3 blocks to main floor, the front pews of outer blocks partly canted. Boarded dado. Inward-facing pews each side of 3-sided 'set fawr' with top brass rail and curved angles. Blind Gothic tracery to panelled back, which slopes outwards. Ornate Gothic pulpit in front of organ gallery, 3 panels to front, one panel canted sides, with inventive blind tracery, gable-capped panelled piers between and massive cornice carved with rosettes on sloping underside, brattished on top, and with carved bookrest on small carved angels. Massive cross-gabled newel each end, and short steps up each side also have heavy Gothic newel with tracery-panel sides and cross-gabled cap. Brass plaques commemorating foundation stone laying 6/8/1906 and dead of First World War each side of pulpit. Tudor-arched doorway left to vestry and stairs to organ.  

Included at grade II* as an unusually fine Arts and Crafts chapel design which is amongst the best in Wales.