- Nprn: 7143
- Cadw Ref: 22/C/54(3)
- Cadw Record No: 10508
- Summary: The Calvinistic Methodist cause was founded in Cardigan in the 1740s, meeting initially in the house of Rachel Evans. The first chapel was built in 1760, being rebuilt in 1776, 1807 and the present, 4th, chapel built in 1832. The Treasurer's and Secretary's notebook for 1832 records payments for materials -stone, lime mahogany, as well as for labour, for instance, to David Rees, joiner, for measuring the chapel, 2s 6d. The accommodation figures in 1851 from the Religious Census are, free 84, other 318.
There are further building works of 1865, possibly including the gallery, while the projecting organ loft with Minister's vestry below it and the flanking outer vestibules were added in front in 1902-03. The front elevation was simplified in the restoration of 1986-87 at a cost of £70,000, to the design of Mr Lloyd Edwards, architect, in a return towards the plain modest style of preaching house evinced by the 1832 building, and following the decision not to abandon the chapel and move to another site. Theree is a chapel house which projects forward at the NE. end of the front elevation. The Vestry and School Room are in a building dated 1933 at the back of the chapel yard.
The body of the present chapel, dated 1832, is built in the Romanesque style with a long-wall entry plan, but the chapel was radically altered in 1902 with a large projecting central organ chamber, flanking porches and new stucco cladding. In 1986 further alterations took place when the steep pyramid roof was removd and replaced with a simplified roofline.
The interior is furnished with box pews curved around the corners of the building and a 3-sided gallery curved at intersections, the plaster-cased gallery beam supported by iron columns stamped "T.Thomas Cardigan". There is a curved sedd fawr and a hardwood pulpit with serpentine front, together with an organ by "Griffin and Stroud/ organ builders/ Bath 1904".
RCAHMW, Octobr 2009 - Description: Cause begun 1740s; chapel built 1760. Rebuilt 1807 & 1832; modified 1864. Enlarged 1902. Restored 1986/7 to the design Mr. Lloyd Edwards. Building style is Romanesque, long-wall entry type. Status (1998): in chapel use.
The Calvinistic Methodist cause was founded in Cardigan in the 1740s, meeting initially in the house of Rachel Evans. The first chapel was built in 1760, rebuilt in 1776, 1807 and the present, 4th chapel in 1832. The Treasurer's and Secretary's notebook for 1832 records payments for materials -stone, lime mahogany - and for labour, for instance, to David Rees, joiner, for measuring the chapel, 2s 6d. Accommodation figures in 1851 (Religious Census): free 84, other 318. Further building works of 1865 (gallery?); the projecting organ loft with Minister's vestry below it and the flanking outer vestibules were added in front in 1902-03. The front elevation was simplified in the restoration of 1986-87 at a cost of 70,000, to the design of Mr Lloyd Edwards, architect, in a return towards the plain modest style of preaching house evinced by the 1832 building, and following the decision not to abandon the chapel and move to another site. The chapel house (see below after chapel interior) projects forward at the NE. end of the front elevation. The Vestry and School Room are in a building dated 1933 at the back of the chapel yard, overlooking the Upper Mwldan (see after chapel house).
Summary: stone-built, square, lateral-façade and galleried chapel with end doorways; the interior, box-pewed seating focusses on the ca. 1900 pulpit, which is roughly in the same position as in 1833; pre-1902 the pulpit was lit by 2 tall semi-circular headed windows. The box pews are curved round the corners of the building, the gallery pews arranged in a mathematically interesting variation of the seating below.
Exterior: the 1833 chapel is faced externally with shallow blocks of stone, visible now in the Minister's vestry and in rear and NE. side elevations; stone plinth. Of the C19 façade, the 2 end doorways remain behind the 1903 vestibules, but minus their pediments.
Present front elevation of beige-painted plaster with dressings picked out in grey and white paint. Slate roof. Gabled central organ loft projection with white-painted quoins and modillion cornice. The Minister's vestry at base lit by 3 short semi-circular headed windows, with grey and white-painted archivolts; flanking beige-painted set-back buttresses with white-painted panels and grey offsets. Large semi-circular window opening to organ loft containing a wheel window of 8 lights with 6 tall and semi-circular headed window lights below it. Pedimental gable to organ loft contains quatrefoil in keyed oculus. A semi-circular headed window in each return. Centre and side roof turrets added also in 1902-03 and removed in restoration programme of 1986-87. Flanking vestibules of 1902-03 each contain in their front wall a central, wide, semi-circular headed doorway with flanking semi-circular headed windows and with trefoil in circular panel and raking modillion cornice over; leaded glazing to windows and fanlight; pairs of doors, each door of 4 moulded and raised and fielded panels with C20 red tile doorstep. At each end on 1st floor, stuccoed wall of 1833 chapel behind the 1902-03 vestibules contains two lengthened gallery window openings, semi-circular headed, with voussoirs over fluted pilasters; plain reveals; leaded windows of two semi-circular lights, each with glazed quatrefoil and spandrels over.
Forecourt of slate slabs with two tile paths to entrance, the last of square black and red tiles laid lozenge-wise.
Forecourt enclosed from street by dwarf walls, railings, gates and gate piers. Yellow brick dwarf walls with slate coping and plinth. Circular railing uprights rise alternately to top and mid rails; fleur-de-lys finials. 2 pairs of gates of similar design but also with curved braces. Square chamfered gate piers, with caps with chevron course and ball finials; stamped "Kelly, Cardigan 1902".
Rear elevation of chapel with 3 cambered-headed window openings in alignment on both ground and first floors; roughly-dressed stone voussoirs; painted slate cills, apart from 2 with concrete cills. Wood-framed cambered-headed windows, each with metal-framed opening pane. Brick lean-to boiler wing with corrugated roof against rear wall of chapel; wooden-boarded door. Gabled side elevations of chapel contains a window opening both to ground floor and gallery, on the NE. side, cambered-headed with stone voussoirs and slate cill.
Interior: vestibules and Minister's vestry of 1903: the vestibules have encaustic tile floors, partly carpeted in SW. vestibule. Beige-painted plaster walls, white-painted skirting and recent coved cornice. In each external doorway, a fanlight with some C20 stained glass; similar glass to flanking windows. In NE. vestibule, a 4-panel folding door on NE. leads to the chapel house while, down 3 steps on SE., is the Minister's vestry, with stopped and chamfered door of 4 panels at the base of the steps. The window openings in the Minister's vestry have splayed reveals and raked cills; frosted glass of mauve and blue tints with yellow border to the 3 window lights. Inner walls of 1903 vestibules contain mid-C19 doorways, semi-circular headed, with fanlights with radiating tracery and mid-C19 doors of 6 moulded and raised and fielded panels; large strap hinges on the rear face. These doors lead to inner lobbies.
The inner lobbies are of mid-C19 date, flank the pulpit and project into the chapel underneath the gallery (see Capel Tabernacl, Aberaeron, NPRN: 7134). They are lined on the pulpit side with moulded panelling and, on their outer side, give access to the gallery staircases. The doors of the inner lobbies lead into the chapel & are lined with blue felt and faced with gilded beading, so as to form 2 panels to each door (see Bethania Baptist Chapel, Cardigan, NPRN: 7141). The doors have mid-C19 rectilinear overlights with etched centre panel, gold and ruby glass margin panes, and etched white flowers on blue angle blocks.
Chapel interior: beige-painted walls beneath gallery. Grey-painted Sedd Fawr and gallery walls and the larger ceiling panel. White-painted window reveals to wood-framed windows. White-painted cove to ceiling; pink cornices at edge of large, flat grey ceiling panel which has rectangular ventilator panels at its angles. Large decorative plaster rose in centre, picked out in pink, blue, yellow and white, with acanthus leaves in middle. White-painted giant basket arch with panelled reveals to organ loft of 1902-03 behind Sedd Fawr; lilac and pink borders to white panels in arch soffit; blue and white egg and dart moulding to panels in pilastered reveals.
Seating: nearly all painted and grained box pews with dark-stained flat curved handrail. Downstairs, an unraked central paired block of pews on a low platform, plus altered pews at front; curved at NW. and SW. angles, echoing the curving gallery intersections over; moulded-panel bench ends and doors on to side aisles; sunk panelling on to rear aisle. Front pews with 2 seat dividers and C19 harmonium in centre; rear pews in central block with central seat divider. 1st and 2nd pews with moulded-panel seat backs; 3rd, 4th and 5th pews with sunk-panel seat backs.
Raked box pews with sunk-panel backs at rear and along sides of chapel. Each block of pews has a bench seat in front with shaped bench end and moulded-panel back. Each side from Sedd Fawr end, 1): a single block of pews of 2 pews depth with front bench seat. 2): a paired block of pews of 3 pews depth with 4 & 5-panel seat backs, and with 9 moulded-panel bench seat in front. 3): a paired block of pews curved towards the rear diagonal aisle: a curved bench seat in front, then a wider single pew, 2 paired pews, a 4th pew with entrance from diagonal aisle and rear corner seat. Finally, extending from the rear diagonal aisle to the centre back aisle, a paired block of pews with 8 moulded-panel front bench seat and 4 pairs of pews behind.
Gallery: 3-sided gallery curved at intersections, the plaster-cased gallery beam supported by iron columns stamped "T.Thomas Cardigan" [Cardigan founder from at least ca. 1850], the columns octagonal & beige at base and with gold flutes and white fillets above. Panelled gallery front with white carved bracket cornice at base; moulded panels separated by panelled pilasters with console caps, three panels to each side, one curved panel to each intersection and two panels to NW. end which has integral C20 clock with circular clockface. Curved flights of wood gallery stairs: 10 steps up to 2 blue felt-lined gallery doors, each planted with gilded beading in 2 panels (as to inner lobby doors); 8 steps above doors with wood panel stair enclosure at top.
Gallery seating: the arrangement of the gallery seating is a variation on that below. From Sedd Fawr end, each side: 1): a single block of pews of 4 pews depth with sunk panels of 3 and a bit panels; the 4th, wider, pew at rear extends to stair enclosure. 2): in front of the gallery stairs, a single block of pews of 2 pews depth with 4 sunk-panel backs. 3): a paired block of pews in 3 tiers with 3 and a bit panel backs. Lateral bench seat behind this and the 4th block, the last curved round the rear corner into the back of the gallery: 3 pews depth with an extra pew in the back of the gallery. 5): at the centre back of the gallery: a paired block of pews of 4 pews depth facing on to the pulpit, and with flanking aisles. Rear corner pews. Long backless bench along back of gallery. Long bench seats with continuous moulded-panel backs along side walls.
Sedd Fawr, pulpit and organ: curved Sedd Fawr enclosure faced with moulded and dark-stained ?hardwood panelling. Similar panelling to flanking pews: 1 pew on N. missing and an upright piano in those on SW.. 2 curving flights of 7 steps with cut string to stained hardwood pulpit with serpentine front; both stair and pulpit parapets with turned balusters, the latter above moulded panelling; panelled newels with Jacobethan style finials; 2 tiers of panelling in the centre of the pulpit with an arched upper panel. 10 late-C20 dark-stained, wood-framed and blue uphlostered chairs in place of Sedd Fawr bench. A C19 or C19 style Windsor chair each side of pulpit. Wooden screens with slat balusters and curved and fretted top rails behind the pulpit and pulpit stairs.
Two-manual pipe organ by "Griffin and Stroud/ organ builders/ Bath 1904", restored 1906-07 by Michael J.Grange, St. Davids. Organ pipes arranged in 5 bays, including an oriel projection flanking the glass-cased keyboards.
Registration: l.h.: Harmonic flute 4, Salicional 8, Gamba 8, Oboe 8, Lieblich Gedact 8, Voix Celestes 8
centre: great to pedal, swell to pedal, swell to great, swell to great, super octave, swell super octave
r.h.: Lieblich flute 4, Hohl flute 8, Open diapason 8, Bourdon 16, Melodic brass 16, Principal 4, Dulciana 8, Bass flute 8
Stained glass to window heads in Sedd Fawr wall and organ loft, similar to glass in 1903 vestibules.
Chapel house: appearance of mid-C19 with later alterations. Painted-plaster walls, slate roof. Front and side elevations with white-painted architraves and grey keystones. A 4-pane C19 or early-C20 sash window with horns and in plain reveals on ground and first floors to r.h.; a 4-panel door with shallow fanlight to l.h.. A 1st-floor sash window with frosted glass in side elevation. Chapel house interior: SW. coridor with stained and grained matchboarded dado, mid-C19 or earlier 6-panel door on NE.; half-glazed 4-panel moulded door to front room.
Vestry and School Room: dated 1933 and built to replace the old Vestry of 1882; Mr Teifion Williams, architect; E.O James of Aberporth, builder. A 2-storey building, built against a cliff edge, the 1st-floor Vestry accessible at 1st floor from the chapel yard. The ground-floor and former Sunday School (in 1996 used as a furniture store) is accessible either via a SE. external staircase from the chapel yard or via external steps against the NE. gable from both the Upper Mwldan & the chapel yard. Pebbledash walls. Blue engineering brick stacks to end gables. Window openings with plain rendered reveals and sloping concrete cills; wood-framed windows. SE. elevation to chapel yard: 2 storeys, 5 bays with centre gable; end doorways. From the SW. door, an external flight of conrete steps leads down to the schoolroom. 2-storey porch at NE. end, acting as porch to 1st-floor vestry: double-pitched slate roof and bargeboard; 2 concrete steps to pink-painted doors, each with 6 frosted-glass panes with aprons above 2 thin vertical wood panels. Marble plaque over inscribed: "Agorwyd/ yr adeilad hwn/ gan/ D.O.Evans, Ysw. A.S./ 1933". 3 window bays: single-light transom window above and below to each side of 3-light centre windows with transom, the upper centre window segmental-headed below the gable (each with light of 8 panes (4 deep, 2 wide) below the transom; the bottom 4 panes in each window of frosted glass). The external stair is enclosed from the yard by a balustrade of ca. 1933, in the form of a rendered dwarf wall and wall piers with iron railings. The iron railings have square uprights set diamondwise, plus openwork panels and plus circlets in the top rail. 3-bay, 2-storey NW. elevation to Upper Mwldan with projecting gabled bay at either end. 3-light windows as to SE. elevation (see above), segmental headed on 1st floor at either end; the centre 1st-floor window plastic framed; vehicular entrance in NE. end bay on ground floor; also 2 flat-headed windows on ground floor.
Vestry interior: Vestibule: black and white tile pavement with square tiles laid lozenge-wise. Beige-painted plaster dado and sunk plaster chair rail; primrose-painted wallpapered walls; pale-blue painted plaster ceiling, slightly coved at edges.
Vestry: late-C20 brown and white carpet on floor. White-painted skirting. Cream-painted plaster dado with sunk plaster chair rail and green/ yellow-painted wallpaper above. Picture rail with pale-blue painted plaster walls over.; white moulded ceiling cornice. Segmental plaster ceiling, painted pale blue, and divided into 5 bays by 4 white and blue-panelled ribs, with white circular panels in the centre of the panels; boarded centre opening (for vent?). An entrance doorway at either end in the SE. wall. Inner doorway to NE. vestibule (see above) has a pair of 1930s doors with panes of frosted glass above varnished wood; brass latches. Doorway with one similar door at SW. end, leading to external stair to the School Room (see above) and to external 1930s toilet wing (see below). At the NE. end, a 1930s varnished wood-framed and garnet-coloured tile fireplace surround, with shelf and mantleshelf; iron fender.
Carpeted dais at SW. end on which is a late-C19 or early-C20 table of varnished pine bearing a wooden lectern and bibles. A wooden settle and 3 Windsor chairs behind the table. Upright piano (Adelbert, Berlin). Wood-framed bench seats of 2 bays with shaped ends: in 1995, 4 in front of the dais and 9 ranged round both lateral walls, and 2 further bench seats each side of NE. fireplace. Also later-C20 wood-framed and upholstered chairs with woven wool seat and back covers.
The 1st-floor vestry has on its NW. 3 smaller rooms overlooking the Mwldan, and is separated from them by a 12-bay moveable screen wall of pitch pine and glass with transoms. Each bay of the screen slotted into metal grooves and made up of 2 moulded and recessed panels of pine at the base; 6 glazed panels over, the top 2 above the transom and the bottom 2 of frosted glass. 3 bays of the screen comprise doors leading to end library and kichen and a centre room, separated from each other by similar screen walls, and also having similar plaster wall treatment to the vestry; they contain wood-framed benches as well as later furniture.
Slate-roofed toilet wing of 1930s on SW. between Vestry and Chapel; later-C20 flat-roofed and blue-brick extenson.
Conclusion: Capel Tabernacl, Cardigan is comparable with the Calvinistic Methodist Capel Tabernacl, Aberaeron for the arrangement of its pulpit, organ, flanking lobbies and box-pewed seating within a lateral-façade chapel. At Aberaeron, the end of the gallery has canted rather than curved intersections and the pews are correspondingly angled to each other. When the organ was added behind the pulpit in Capel Tabernacl, Aberaeron, the ca. 1870 lobbies and wide pedimented façade were retained without a front addition.
OJ, 3/11 & 23/11/95, & 22/11/96 - 1/97.
Visited by OJ 27/10/95 & 17/1/97 and by DJR & OJ 21/11/96, with the permission of The Minister
See: C. Currie Hughes, Trem ar ddwy ganrif o hanes y Tabernacl Aberteifi 1760-1960 (Aberteifi: 1960). Cardiganshire and Tivyside Advertiser, 2/9/1904, 18/11/1910, 4/1/1929, 27/3/1987; W.J.Lewis, "The gateway to Wales": a history of Cardigan (Carmarthen?: Dyfed CC Cultural Services Department, 1990).
Well painted render on stone/slate. Decorative front gable with rose window. 1902 Gothic refacing. 1993 PCNPA.
Powerful presence in the main street, white with dark green trim. First class decorated style with projecting central façade flanked by entrance porches on the groud floor and the rest of the façade dropped well back. Rose window, elevated pediment with dentilled frieze contains a circular windon with quatrefoil motif. (Anthony Jones) - Restored: 1986 Source:PCNPA
- Restored: 1832 Source:PCNPA
- Restored: 1902 Source:PCNPA
- Restored: 1986 Source:Cadw
- Altered: 1864 Source:Cadw
- Restored: 1807 Source:PCNPA
- Restored: 1986-1987 Source:Evan James
- Restored: 1986 Source:Cadw
- Restored: 1864 Source:PCNPA
- Alterations: 1864 Source:RCAHMW
- Alterations: 1902 Source:RCAHMW
- Built: 1776 Source:PCNPA
- Built: 1760 Source:Horsfall-Turner
- Built: 1832 Source:Cadw (1992)
- Built: c.1870 Source:Anthony Jones
- Built: 1760 Source:RCAHMW
- Cause: 1740 Source:Horsfall-Turner
- Date Of Chapel: 1902 Source:
- Longitudinal Range: 1870 Source:Cadw (1988)
- Forecourt Gates, Railings: 1902 Source:Cadw
- Organ: 1904 Source:Cadw
- Front: 1902-1903 Source:Cadw
- Rebuilt: 1833 Source:Evan James
- Extended: 1902-1903 Source:Evan James
- Renewed: 1960 Source:Evan James
- Rebuilt: 1807 Source:Evan James
- Re-fronted: 1902 Source:Cadw
- Renewed: 1865 Source:Evan James
- Rebuilt: 1832 Source:RCAHMW
- Rebuilt: 1807 Source:RCAHMW
- New Vestry/schoolroom: 1933 Source:Evan James
- Vestry: 1882 Source:Evan James
- Steep Pyramid Roof Removed: 1986 Source:BOW
- Interior Remodeled: 1864 Source:BOW
- Organ: 1904 Source:BOW
- Pulpit: 1902 Source:BOW
- Rebuilt: 1832 Source:JO index
- Vestry: 1935 Source:JO index
- Architect: 1986-1987 Lloyd Edwards,
- Architect: 1986 Llwyd Edwards,
- Architect: 1864 T. Thomas, Cardigan
- Carpenter: 1832 David Rees, Pendre
- Architect: 1935 John Teifion Williams, Cardigan
- £ 2300: 1905 (RCCEORBWM)
- 84: 1851 ()
- 318: 1851 ()
- 800: 1905 (RCCEORBWM)
- Chapel: 17/01/1997 (Site visit)
- Chapel: 2011 (Denominational Yearbook)
- Materials
- Monument Type: CHAPEL
- Form: Building
- Style: Romanesque
- Gallery: On three sides
- Plan: Long-wall entry
- Pulpit Position: Front wall
Key Details of this Chapel
Key Dates of this Chapel
Key People in this Chapel History
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: SN17754623
- Address: PENDRE, CARDIGANCARDIGAN
2 thoughts on “Tabernacl Chapel (welsh Calvinistic Methodist), Pendre, Cardigan”
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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