Capel y Trinity, including attached former Sunday School and forecourt gates and railings, Uplands, Swansea

History

Trinity is a Welsh-language former Calvinistic Methodist chapel, now Welsh Presbyterian Church. The original chapel in Park Street was destroyed during a bombing raid in 1941. A new chapel was built in 1954, next to Glanmor Sunday School, which had been built by the chapel in 1925 in the emerging suburb of Sketty. The Swansea office of Percy Thomas and Son, architects, was commissioned to design the building. The main designer was Norman Thomas, with Howell Mendus as assistant.

Exterior

A tall gable-end chapel in a spare modern idiom. Limited Romanesque detail on entrance front, but otherwise austerely functional. Roughcast walls on a brick plinth, with dressings of reconstituted stone, under a tile roof on projecting eaves. Small-pane windows have metal glazing bars and tile sills. The entrance is a round-headed doorway in a finely moulded deep surround of reconstituted stone, and has double fielded-panel doors under an overlight with radiating iron grille. The doorway is flanked by small windows and above is a round window, also with a radiating iron grille. The 6-window side walls have 5 tall windows lighting the main chapel and one set back lighting the top of the stairs. Projecting flat-roofed aisles have 6 broader windows with tile drip moulds, of which 5 light the main chapel and one the room at the rear. A narrower window lights the vestibule. There is a narrow full-height projection at the rear which houses the organ. At ground level it has a brick section with small windows to toilets and a rear doorway.

On the R-hand side is a low flat-roofed link to the earlier Sunday School, which is set forward from the main chapel. It also has roughcast walls on a brick plinth, with freestone dressings and sills, under a tile roof. The gabled entrance porch has a blind pointed doorway, with the steeply-pointed double boarded doors in the R side wall. The blind arch has a hood mould, similar to the hood moulds of flanking square-headed cross windows. Above is a narrow pointed vent below a smooth-rendered triangular section up to the apex which bears an inscription recording the building of the Glanmor Sunday School in 1925. The side walls are plainer. On the L are 2 cross windows in front of the link from the main chapel. On the R-hand side are 4 cross windows. At the rear is an L-plan kitchen, and a boiler house in the basement, of similar materials to the main range, with brick ridge stack. On the N side are external steps to the kitchen and a boarded door to its L to the boiler room. Windows on the S side facing the chapel are wide and wood-framed in the boiler house but replacement uPVC in the kitchen above.

There are railings to the front (E), facing Glanmor Park Road, and on the S side facing a pedestrian alley. The plain railings are set on a dwarf wall and between piers, both of brick with concrete copings. The chapel entrance has outer piers of reconstituted stone, between which the fence curves round to similar gate piers inscribed Capel y Trinity, to iron gates with an abstract square pattern. The entrance to the former Sunday School has more conventional double iron gates with dog bars.

Interior

The chapel has a conventional plan, comprising entrance vestibule, galleried main chapel, and rooms behind. In the vestibule, a 2-light window with frosted glass opposite the entrance provides borrowed light from the chapel. Doors R and L open to the main chapel, and on the R side is a dog-leg stair to a landing with a tiled floor and gallery doors R and L. Here, at landing level are triple 2-light smalled paned windows into the main body of the chapel.

The main chapel is striking for its austere stylistic harmony, the effect enhanced by the limited colour scheme of building materials and furnishings. The walls are faced in pale brown brick with smooth render to the plain square piers that form a low arcade between main chapel and the aisles, under a ceiling of square white tiles. Behind the pulpit is full-height bay of oak panelling incorporating metal grilles through which the sound of the organ was filtered. There is a raked gallery with a front of coarse concrete. Oak panelled benches fill the chapel space and are reached from the outer aisles. (There is no central aisle.) There is a wide sedd fawr on a raised platform, and then a canted boarded pulpit with bronze railings.

Most of the building has parquet floors. The chapel’s interior doors are single-panelled, but the doors in the vestibule and former Sunday School are glazed with small panes.

To R and L in the rear wall are simple panel doors to 2 rear rooms and a corridor with toilets. From the vestibule the lower flight of the gallery stair is open to the link between chapel and former Sunday School. The former Sunday School retains a boarded wainscot. Its original roof is concealed behind a modern false ceiling.

Reasons for Listing

Listed for its architectural interest as a rare mid-C20 chapel that has a well-preserved interior with simple bold detail typical of the period, by one of the most prominent of C20 Welsh architects. Capel y Trinity also has special historical interest as part of the rebuilding of bomb-damaged Swansea after 1945.

External Links

Cadwr Listing

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