History

Baptist chapel of 1884-5 by George Morgan of Carmarthen, built by Joshua Harries & James Kelly of Tenby. Foundation stone laid by the industrialists Sir Richard Cory of Cardiff and Sidney Watson of Rochdale; the cost was nearly £4000. Opened in 1885, the Rev C Spurgeon officiating. The initial tender was for a chapel and 2 houses to cost £2670, the intended manse to the right was never built, and the chapel house, now Walmer House, to the left was taken by Joshua Harries in part payment for his work. The schoolroom was in the basement.There were 2 pinnacles on the front, removed in C20.
The first chapel was at top of Park Road c1830, moved 1862 to a new chapel by Fosters of Bristol, enlarged 1867, on the Fire Station site, South Parade.
Morgan usually designed in a Romanesque style but this church and the North Road Baptist Church, Milford Haven, of 1878-9, are his principal Gothic works. The Tenby Museum has an engraving of the proposed scheme showing the chapel flanked by the two houses, which were to be similar in scale but different in detail.

Exterior

Baptist chapel, rock-faced coursed squared grey limestone with Bath stone dressings and slate roof with small gabled ventilators. Coped shouldered gable with finial. Decorated Gothic style front in 3 bays divided by stepped buttresses (formerly with octagonal spirelets). Large central pointed window with hoodmould, and moulded arch and column shafts. Window is subdivided into 2 2-light pointed windows also with column shafts, sexfoil heads and then a large sexfoil over. Steeply gabled central porch between lean-to lobbies. Porch has coped gable and big ashlar pointed moulded arch on column shafts framing a sexfoil rose window over paired Caernarvon-arched entrances with column shafting. The centre window is framed by buttresses with ashlar quoins at lower level, step, gablet, further step, then ashlar upper part with blind cusped gabled panel under square terminal, breaking through gable line (pyramid caps replace former spirelets).buttresses. Either side of the porch the lean-to lobbies have 2 paired small cusped lancets under quatrefoil-pierced parapet, buttresses each side with quoins, and tall ashlar cross-gabled finials. Coping at outer ends links to base of outer buttresses with quoins and ashlar set-off. Simple long outer windows, cusped lancet each side with hoodmould and cusped transom at gallery level. Gable apex has stepped triplet of narrow rectangular louvred vents.
To left a narrow link bay to Walmer House has small first floor sash with blank trefoil head over doorway with shouldered head under gable with quatrefoil panel in lean-to porch.
Right side elevation of 6 bays with full-height basement and 7 dividing buttresses with 4 set-offs and black brick quoins (yellow brick to first two buttresses). Five long pointed cusped lights divided at gallery level with sill and cusped head below. Basement cambered-headed 4-pane sashes with yellow brick heads. Yellow brick eaves. Apsidal canted end with 3 traceried 2-light windows, over lean-to basement and ground floor. Ground floor has 2 single-light windows each side, basement has 2 pointed windows with black brick voussoirs each side and central pointed door between buttresses. End wall of lean-to has 2-light window each floor.

Interior

Entrance is, unusually, onto a double lobby with Gothic arch to the inner lobby that has a further rose window and paired doorways. Spacious interior with raked end gallery on cast-iron quatrefoil columns with panelled and columned front. At the opposite end is a tall arch to the organ recess with corbelled shafts and foliated capitals. Good double-coved 6-bay roof, concave to the lower stage and flat to the upper stage with diamond-shaped ventilators to the top. The arched-braced trusses are carried on further arched members that rise from stunted wall shafts with foliated bases; other roof detail includes scroll-moulded tie-beams and central queen posts. Generally simple pitch-pine Gothic furnishings. The organ was brought in 1970 from a chapel in Pontypridd. The schoolroom below has 6 cast-iron, scallop-capped columns made by Macfarlane & Co of Glasgow.

Reasons for Listing

Included as a well-preserved Gothic chapel by George Morgan, leading Welsh chapel architect of the later C19.

External Links

• Cadwr Listing
• Wikidata Q29485760

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

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  Berkshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  ENGLAND GUIDE TO POST WAR LISTED: A Guide to Post-war Listed Buildings
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  The Victorian House Manual (2nd Edition): How They Were Built, Improvements & Refurbishment, Solutions to All Common Defects - Includes Relevant ... ... Properties (Haynes Manual) (Haynes Manuals)
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  Derbyshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)