- Nprn: 6433
- Cadw Ref: 24/A/47(2)
- Cadw Record No: 11932
- Summary: Caersalem Baptist Chapel was built in 1893 in the Sub-Classical, Italianate style with a gable entry.
The chapel closed in the mid to late 1990's and in 2000 was still in a state of disuse. The building is Grade 2 listed.
RCAHMW, June 2009
Caersalem Baptist Chapel, 1893
In many ways this is a variant on the earlier classical temple Baptist Chapel designs in Llanelli but with the earlier full-height temple show-front design transformed into a two-storey house-like version. The simpler decoration of the side-walls of the chapel is reduced to a projecting architrave band around the windows. The upper `temple' of the show-front has a central window with Venetian tracery set over the large central porch, itself a temple in miniature, carried by free-standing Tuscan columns. This two-storey temple chapel design is not very common in Wales, although Capel Als is a second Llanelli example, but did allow the congregation to use an abundance of cut-stone in the show-front, markedly contrasting with the subdued effect of using the much darker local Pennant sandstone on the sidewalls of the chapel. By this date most English-language nonconformist congregations would have built in gothic. Enclosing cast-iron railings were a common feature of chapels and these were made by Thomas & Clement, founders of Llanelli. At the time of the nonconformist statistical survey of 1905 the chapel could accommodate a fairly average-sized seated congregation of 700 with 250 in the schoolroom. The congregation also had a caretaker's house and a manse for the Minister.
Stephen R. Hughes, RCAHMW, 06.09.2007 - Description: Chapel built 1893; the cast-iron gates & gate piers are by Thomas & Clement, founders, of Llanelli. Still in religious use in 1992. Built in the Sub-Classical style, gable entry type. Status (2000): disused (closed).
Caersalem Baptist Chapel, 1893
In many ways this is a variant on the earlier classical temple Baptist Chapel designs in Llanelli but with the earlier full-height temple show-front design transformed into a two-storey house-like version. The simpler decoration of the side-walls of the chapel is reduced to a projecting architrave band around the windows. The upper `temple' of the show-front has a central window with Venetian tracery set over the large central porch, itself a temple in miniature, carried by free-standing Tuscan columns. This two-storey temple chapel design is not very common in Wales, although Capel Als is a second Llanelli example, but did allow the congregation to use an abundance of cut-stone in the show-front, markedly contrasting with the subdued effect of using the much darker local Pennant sandstone on the sidewalls of the chapel. By this date most English-language nonconformist congregations would have built in gothic. Enclosing cast-iron railings were a common feature of chapels and these were made by Thomas & Clement, founders of Llanelli. At the time of the nonconformist statistical survey of 1905 the chapel could accommodate a fairly average-sized seated congregation of 700 with 250 in the schoolroom. The congregation also had a caretaker's house and a manse for the Minister.
Entry by Stephen R. Hughes 06.09.2007 using the following main sources: the Capel Newsletter 34 (Autumn 1999), Capel Local Information Sheet 16 on Llanelli; T. Lloyd, J. Orbach & R. Scourfield, The Buildings of Wales, Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion (Yale, New Haven & The Buildings of Wales) 2006 & chapels on The Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Wales database at www.coflein.gov.uk & Royal Commission on the Church of England and other Religious Bodies in Wales and Monmouthshire, Volume VI, Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence Nonconformist County Statistics 1911, Carmarthenshire (collected 1905), (London, HMSO) 1911, p.82 & Stephen Hughes, 'Thomas Thomas, 1817-88: the first national architect of Wales', Archaeologia Cambrensis 152 (2003), pp. 69-166
Summary: Italianate pedimental gable entry chapel with centre doorway to lobby, the last with entries to two ground-floor side aisles and to flanking gallery staircases; pulpit and baptismal tank against rear chapel wall; chapel seating with doors; decorative boarded ceiling. Rear vestry.
History: opened on Sunday November 12, 1893; the opening ceremonies on the 12th included the ceremony of church formation in the afternoon (Llanelly Mercury & South Wales Advertiser, November 16, 1893, in Llanelli Reference Library). The Welsh Baptist causes at Bethel (NPRN: 12093; formed 1841) and Moriah (NPRN: 6438; formed 1872) had contributed financially. Closed in 1990s; windows and front entrance presently (02/2001) boarded up; the chapel has been sold and there is a proposal for conversion to offices.
Boundaries and setting: the chapel is set in a small plot of land at the junction of Caersalem Terrace & Marsh Street (Caersalem Terrace shown as Little Emma Street on OS CM sheet LVIII.7 (1907)), that is enclosed by stone walls and railings: the last extend along Caersalem Terrace where they merge into a higher wall of stone only; the wall and railings also extend along Marsh Street, where they return SW. to a stone outhouse to the chapel. The cast-iron railings, of late C19 or early C20, have spear-headed finials and are made up of intersecting ovals between top and bottom rails. The chapel grounds are entered through the gates at the junction of Marsh Street and Caersalem Terrace, which are stylistically similar to the railings but are made up of panels of intersecting ovals arranged in 3 tiers; cast-iron Gothic gate piers inscribed "Thomas & Clement, Llanelly". The gates lead into stone-flagged walkways along the NE. and SE. sides of the chapel and SE. side of the vestry, which are enclosed by grass strips and lawns with stone edging, the lawns now partly dug up; the southernmost lawn along Caersalem Terrace is enclosed internally by its own, stylistically different, cast-iron railings.
Chapel exterior: facing on to Marsh Street, a podium of 2 square stone steps leads into an open-sided Tuscan porch at the centre of the 2-storey, 3-bay front façade, the front of snecked, rock-faced stone, faced with separate Tuscan orders of pilasters and entablature to ground and gallery floors, under a crowning triangular pediment with moulded wood cornice. The porch has 2 circular columns with pilaster responds, under entablature and trangular pediment. Round-arched door and window openings with key and impost blocks: the centre doors, only visible internally, are each of 5 panels, including a central horizontal panel, beneath a semi-circular fanlight of etched glass, divided up by timber ribs into 2 semi-circular lights beneath a roundel. There is a window each side of the centre doorway, and there is a similar in each side bay at gallery level, the windows at present boarded externally, but shown internally to be of 2-light timber tracery with round-arched heads, under a roundel and spandrels. The centre gallery window is wider and shorter, and is made up of 2 ashlar-framed lights beneath an ashlar roundel, and is inset with two-light sub-tracery of timber as found in the other windows of the front façade (see above). The windows have plain translucent glazing, or translucent glazing etched with fleur de lys, as in the window to the SE. gallery stairs. Gallery entablature on front façade inscribed "Caersalem Baptist Chapel", and the circular ashlar frame to the tympanum roundel is inscribed "Built 1893". Modern tile roof (check). Moulded wood cornice to tympanum continues above the
2-storey, 3-bay side elevations: these are also faced with snecked rock-faced stone above a projecting rock-faced plinth. The window openings are like those in the flanking bays of the front façade, and internally are shown to be of 3-panes depth below, and of 5-panes depth above, at gallery level.
The rear SW. gable has the vestry built against it, but is lit by 2 tall two-light windows of 6-panes depth, with roundel and spandrels in their head; in the apex, a roundel punched with petal-shaped tracery.
The single-storey vestry is wrapped round the SW. end of the chapel, and is entered via a lean-to porch on SW. Snecked stone walls; C20 concrete?-tile roof with stone stack on NW. gable. Round-arched window openings with timber two-light tracery of 3 panes depth, as to ground floor of chapel. Gabled NW. and SE. end elevations each contain two such window openings beneath a crowning roundel with key and impost blocks, and inset with punched petal tracery. The wide cement-rendered SW. elevation has a wide and shallow gabled projection at its centre, with similar fenestration to the vestry's NW. and SE. end walls (see above), but without ashlar frames to the lower windows.
Chapel interior:
The Chapel lobby has a multi-coloured and patterned ceramic tile floor: Minton tiles? Vertically-boarded dado with punched quatrefoil rail; painted plaster walls over. The wall between lobby and chapel is one-brick thick, and any centre window has been removed from it; the flanking entries to the chapel aisles each contain a four-moulded panel door with long brass handle. 2-flight gallery staircase of timber with intermediate landing at each end of the lobby: each lower flight of 7 steps with timber balustrading in front of a staircase window; vertically-boarded dado with punched quatrefoil rail on the inner side. Four-moulded panel door on half landing, at base of upper flight of 12 steps, with linoleum treads and plain vertically-boarded dado.
Chapel floors and walls: wood-boarded floors, though largely removed from blocks of side seating in ground floor and gallery: red carpeted aisles at ground floor.
Stone walling revealed at ground floor through removal of dado panelling and side seating. Above dado level, cream-painted plaster walls on an original?/early-C20 scheme of painted stencil decoration which is now showing through the top paint from below: this stencil decoration appears to be derived from Roman/ Italian Renaissance influences, e.g., vaguely akin to Raphael's scheme for Villa Madama, etc., and as found in other C19 chapels, e.g., a now-defunct scheme of decoration in Capel Salem, Caernarfon. Side window openings with canted reveals and raked wooden cills. Behind the pulpit and beneath the stained-glass windows in the rear wall, is sunk verical panelling with punched quatrefoils in a top rail, in turn set below a Venetian-arched recess, its curved recess framed each side by 2 fluted pilasters with Corinthian caps, beneath a common entablature with dentils and modillions, rising to form an arch over the central recess. The above -mentioned panelling below this feature is flanked at each end by a slightly higher wood frame to a doorway set at the end of each side aisle, and leading to the vestry, and inset with a four-moulded panel door with circular brass handle.
Memorials: white stone wall tablet in memory of Y Parchedig John Lewis (1866-1930) and his wife, at SW. end of SE. aisle.
Chapel ceiling: walls crowned by white-painted cornice; white plaster coving above it rising to a further white cornice, framing a rectangular decorative ceiling: this has herringbone-boarded margin panelling with four angle vents, while the ceiling itself is divided by ribs into boarded panels, four of the panels triangular; verdigris-coloured boarding and moulded pink ribs. At the centre, is a domical feature, framed by boarded margin panelling, its drum in the form of a vent with trellis panels, enriched by Classical leaf ornament above: from the centre of this feature was suspended a long cord, latterly probably for an electric lamp; four other cords are suspended from the ceiling.
Ground-floor seating: this has been removed almost entirely, and heaped together, both in the middle of the centre block and in the vestry; the wood boarded platforms benath have been largely removed also. From the evidence of mortises, the seats seem to have been at right angles to the axis of the side aisles, to have been about 15 seats deep in the side blocks, and to have been about 13 to 14 seats deep in the centre block, and all to have faced the front of the pulpit. In front of each side block of seats, there were no mortises along the edge of the side aisle, but there was space for the customary seating which faces on to the side of the pulpit and Set Fawr. The displaced seats (see above) have doors and vertically boarded backs; the seat ends have continuous moulding to the arm rests, rising from there to rounded tops and then descending to halfway down on the other side, to the top hinge for the seat door.
Gallery and gallery seating: the gallery columns and their curved entablature remain, but the gallery itself retains now (2/2001) merely part of its floor structure, with seating extant only at the NE. end, over the rear of the chapel and lobby. Circular iron gallery columns with bases, the shafts currently (2001) painted brown below and cream above; Corinthian caps; the curved entablature to the gallery columns comprises a plain frieze band with dentils, and modillions over. In the gallery itself, although the side seats have been removed, traces of their centre access steps remain, as do traces of those formerly at each end of the wide curved seating at the back or NE. end of the gallery; here there were possibly centre access stairs as well (check from photos). The seating at the NE. end has been displaced and is is bunched close together (2/2001), and it seems to be like that downstairs, but with taller vertically-boarded seat backs.
Set fawr: a single step from each side aisle leads up to the red-carpeted Set Fawr enclosure; the Set Fawr seat is set on a semi-elliptical curve; the red plush seat remains but the upholstered seat back has largely disappeared (apart from portions of the stuffing), as has the panelled iron balustrade of which one panel remains, of intersecting circles inset with a star.
Pulpit & baptistery: oblong pulpit platform with curved front corners, and with semi-elliptical projection for former pulpit at its centre front. The platform is faced with vertical sunk panelling, and its balustrade is missing; it is accessed each side by a flight of 5 wood steps with outer scroll string, the fragments of panelled iron stair balustrade with anthemion motif remaining at each top outer side, with a curved wreathed newel/ baluster extant at the top on the inner side, at the entrance to the pulpit platform; similar newel (mutilated) at the foot of each pulpit stair, and another adjacent, that is fixed to the Set Fawr seat. The floor of the pulpit platform is of wood planks, largely displaced (2001), and thus revealing the brick baptismal tank below: the interior of the tank is lined with white ceramic tiles and the tank has non-identical access steps at its NW. and SE. ends.
The vestry is entered externally via the SE. porch and, internally, via the single door to either side of the pulpit. The vestry has a wood-boarded floor, and a vertically-boarded dado with punched quatrefoil dado rail; cream-painted plaster walls above, with single rows of coat hooks affixed to wooden plank boards, along SW., SE. and NE. walls. Semi-lozenge shaped chimney breast projects into room at centre of NW. side: plain wood pilastered fireplace surround to its SW. facet and C20 boiler? Stove to its NE. facet. Horizontally wooden-boarded ceiling, the ceiling rising in centre to form a saltire cross so as to accommodate the vestry's SW. and NE. centre gables. Much of the floor is now covered with seating from the chapel.
OMJ: 13/2/2001-22/2/2001. Visited 13/2/2001 by OMJ.
CORE INFO TRANSFERRED:
CAT ACCESS NO:
NA/CM/2001/011
NA/CM/2001/012e
NA/CM/2001/022e
PHOTO CATOLOGUE NUMBER:
28565.
LAST EDIT DATE 2001/22/08/RCAHMW/GME - Built: 1893 Source:Cadw (plaque)
- Built: 1893 Source:Orbach, Julian
- Closure: 2000 Source:Capel Newsletter
- Cast Iron Gates: 1893 Source:
- Date Of Chapel: 1893 Source:
- £ 4550: 1905 (RCCEORBWM)
- 700: 1905 Sittings (RCCEORBWM)
- 250: 1905 Accomodation (RCCEORBWM)
- Disused: 2/2001 Sold; proposed for conversion to offices (Site visit - O M Jenkins)
- Materials
- Stone
- Monument Type: CHAPEL
- Form: Building
- Storey: Two Storey
- Style: Sub Classical
- Plan: Gable Entry
- Window Glazing: Florentine Tracery
- Windows: Round-Headed
Key Details of this Chapel
Key Dates of this Chapel
Costs during this Chapels History
Capacities during this Chapels History
Changes of Status its History
Key Characteristics of this Chapel
Images from Coflein
Map
- Grid Reference: SS50819952
- Address: MARSH STREET/CAERSALEM TERRACE, LLANELLILLANELLI
2 thoughts on “Caersalem Welsh Baptist Chapel, Marsh St./caersalem Terrace, Llanelli”
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Hello
My great great grandparents were married in Kinnerton Chapel in Old Radnor on 21st May1850. I have been searching for information on the Chapel, so was pleased to find this website. I have now located it on Google Street View – looks like someone is ‘doing it up’ to live in: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.2612635,-3.1095337,3a,90y,232.95h,84.26t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1s-8DWPORkq2RFVNXBLde_-g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!9m2!1b1!2i53?hl=en-GB
The marriage record of my ancestors Abraham Bounds and Elizabeth Williams is attached. I hope it is of interest.
All the best
Saira
Dear Sara
Thank you for the information. I am glad to hear that it was some help to you.
Good luck on your continued search
Christine