Calfaria Baptist Sunday School was built in 1881 and the Chapel built alongside in 1888. The building is Lombardic/Italian in style with a gable entry plan and was designed by architect George Morgan of Carmarthen. The chapel was still in use in 1998 but by 2006 was disused. The building is Grade 2 listed.

RCAHMW, June 2009

Calfaria Baptist Chapel, 1887

George Morgan of Carmarthen, a professional architect, was the most influential designer of chapels for the Baptists in south Wales. At Calfaria are two chapels side by side (both designed by Morgan). This was a common arrangement where the first modest chapel was replaced by something larger and more elaborate when the congregation grew and could afford it, the first building becoming a Sunday School. This happened very rapidly at Calfaria with the first simple red-brick chapel completed in 1881 and the second built only six years later. This was constructed in Morgan's influential `Lombardic' style, derived from north Italian Romanesque architecture of the twelth-century but here used in a Spartan and economic version compared to Morgan's earlier Lombardic Baptist chapels elsewhere: Abergavenny (1877); Haverfordwest (1878); Port Talbot (1880) and Morriston (1884). The two Lombardic features drawn from earlier chapels are the stepped-eaves of the gable and the group of diminishing arches around the attic ventilator in the apex of the gable. The group of circular lights around the head of the central window had recently been used by three architects of the Independent denomination: Humphrey, Freeman and Thomas and is derived from Palladio's sixteen-century Villa Poina in northern Italy. The flanking first-floor windows have simple Florentine tracery and the ground-floor staircase lights are given economic interest by the simple device of stepping them up from the two central doors. This play of elements using a minimum of expensive cut-stone livens-up what is otherwise a very austere exterior especially on the sides where the mass-walling of Pennant sandstone is unrelieved except for simple paired-windows.

Calfaria Interior

The warm woodwork of a Welsh chapel interior, such as this, always surprises after the often rather austere exterior of many such buildings. As befits a chapel of The Word of God the pulpit dominates from a central position and as with nearly all post -1859 Revival chapels this does not have a single-person tub pulpit, as found in churches and earlier chapels, but a platform pulpit where speakers could ascend from one side and descend the other with room for at least three people on the elevated ornate stage. This was ideal for the Cymanfaoedd Canu, Eisteddfodau and preaching festivals that were such a strong feature of Welsh later nineteenth-century community life. A distinctive feature of Welsh Chapels was the Deacons' Great Seat or Set Fawr, where the Chapel Deacons would stand facing the audience during hymns, enhancing the authority of the preacher. Such features are not generally found in other areas of Britain except for some Cornish Chapels. In Baptist Chapels the total immersion adult Baptism tank is usually located beneath large trap-doors in this location in front of the pulpit. This chapel end, opposite the entrance, was then upwardly enhanced by the addition of a hugh organ with its ornate and decorated pipes rising towards the ceiling, and as often happened this blocks a window, in this case a large wheel window which was generally one of the glories of Morgan's Lombardic Chapels. The chapel had a larger than average seating capacity of 870 noted in 1905 with a large Sunday School provision of 500 places.

Stephen R. Hughes, RCAHMW, 06.09.2007