The Welsh Wesleyans in Salem chapel, Queen Street decided a newer, larger and grander chapel was required by the end of the 19th century. A new chapel was built on a site of the Jolly Sailor's public house in Upper Great Darkgate Street; as the Aberystwyth Observer remarked: `it is not often the devil makes way for God? . It was designed by Walter Thomas of Liverpool in 1880 at a cost of £5900, the anticipated cost having been £2250. David Davies, Cardiganshire MP, laid the foundation stone.

The chapel is built in the Classical style of the gable-entry type, to the design of architect Walter William Thomas of Liverpool. The chapel is 2-storey with a 5-bay pedimented front, the walls are of rubble masonry with freestone dressings and the roof of slate with brick chimney stacks. A shield to the pediment reads "Saint Paul's 1879". Two early cupolas are seen in early photographs and were shown on the architect's drawing for the schoolroom that was built alongside in 1903-4 but have subsequently disappeared.

The Aberystwyth Observer's account of 3 November 1878 stated that the new chapel would measure internally 72'6" x 40' x 32' high (as described in 1880, it was 2" longer). There was to be a gallery round three sides, and an organ gallery at the S. end, with Minister's vestry and committee room under the same, and divided from the chapel by a "handsome pitch pine screen with elaborately carved teak panels" ("carved panels" only are mentioned in 1880). In front of the screen "will stand the pulpit?also of pitch pine with carved teak panels and turned and carved mahogany newel posts and turned pitch-pine balusters".

"Two spacious staircases in the tower" were to approach the gallery, and have since been built ?"with ornamental turned pitch pine balusters and mahogany newel posts and handrails, the entrance to the same being out of a beautiful encaustic tiled vestibule, which is divided from the body of the chapel by an ornamental moulded pitch pine screen with swing doors, the upper portion of which is filled with cathedral tinted glass of various colours" (1878, 3 Nov.).

It was anticipated that the "Seating will be spacious, and of the most modern arrangement". On 25 June 1880, the Cambrian News wrote: "The promoters of the building about being completed met together for the purpose of letting the pews in the chapel, and after the work was over, they felt very happy and considerably relieved, inasmuch as they had fortunately succeeded in prosecuting that delicate (and often troublesome) business of letting the pews without causing the least grievance or unpleasantness among the Congregation".

St Paul's is The Academy public house, having closed in 1992. Booths for eating and drinking on a levelled floor have replaced the rows of seats in the raked gallery. The pulpit and organ have been moved; the pulpit now the home to a disc jockey, the pipes are now behind the bar in the former schoolroom. But a number of features and fittings still remain including the ceiling panels and the texts on the end gallery wall.

A schoolroom was added in 1903.

S Fielding, 2012

[Additional:] The source of the design of this impressive urban chapel (1879) is probably William Botterill's Quay Methodist Church (1873), Bridlington. (A suggestion by Thomas Lloyd citing The AMS Newsletter 2009-10.) RFS/RCAHMW/Sept. 2011.