81346

 

II  

Designated  

11/09/2003  

11/09/2003  

Hope Baptist Chapel including attached vestry and schoolroom  

 

Bridgend  

Bridgend  

 

Railway Station  

290677  

179911  

 

Occupying a prominent triangular site between Station Hill and Derwen Road with attached church offices grouped around the Station Hill entrance. The main façade faces N over a walled and railed forecourt with terraced steps.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

Built 1906-08 by Philip J Thomas of Bridgend for English-speaking Baptists. Recently cleaned and renovated externally.  

Large Gothic Revival chapel with pale sandstone dressings and grey hammer-dressed facings in thin courses; slate roofs with base of ventilator to main ridge. Three-bay gabled main façade with polygonal turrets flanking a big Geometric-traceried window with porch gable rising into blind frieze of 5 cusped panels of alternating design. Stepped buttresses flank the central doorway with deeply moulded arch-head; double boarded doors with strapwork hinges. Single cusped lancets under hoodmoulds step up to flanking stair towers under transverse slated gables; diagonal corner buttresses. Two-storey side elevations with tall return ranges forming a T-plan at S end; traceried heads to 2-light windows and square-headed ground-floor lancets. The downhill elevation to Derwen Road is 3 storeys with pointed doorway and plain sash windows to church hall. Lean-to vestries attached to S end with gables of similar church offices and Sunday School completing the group to left along Station Hill.  

Spacious T-plan interior with ribbed and boarded ceiling of 5-sided profile and tie-rods linked to feet of trusses. Exceptional cantilevered gallery on metalwork frame, concealed by sinuous panelled front, sweeps forward from transepts and circles round at main N galleried end. Openwork metal-panelled front with concave palmette frieze over fluted bolection mounding; sinuous timber handrails. Full-height blind Gothic arch flanked by smaller openings rises behind polygonal reading desk with alabaster parapet to immersion pool at front. Vestibule under N gallery with twin baluster stairs to upper level. Art Nouveau patterned glass to window heads. Church hall runs under main chapel with I-beam floor joists.  

Listed as a prominent Edwardian chapel by a well-known Bridgend architect with an exceptional cantilevered gallery within well-preserved interior.