Bethany Baptist Chapel is a handsome gothic urban chapel designed by the local architect E. A. Johnson of Abergavenny, who designed much of the late nineteenth-century Abergavenny. Unusually for a chapel his name and that of the Abergavenny builder, J.G. Thomas, both appear on the foundation stone, perhaps reflecting Johnson's high status and aspirations in the town. A chapel had been first built by this congregation or cause in 1828 but the present building dates from 1882.

Nationally known architects such as Thomas Thomas had pioneered the use of flanking 'wings' or roof-level projections, over side stairs to upper galleries, to improve the look of the previous 'big shed' profile of simple and earlier chapel fronts and this idea is used here to improve the impressive main south-western front. That main show front is distinguished from the local stone-built rear and south-eastern (right-hand) side of the chapel and basement Sunday School (sunk into the valley of the adjacent culverted stream), by being built in the more fashionable brick with ashlar worked-stone dressings. Interestingly the left-hand (north-western) side of the chapel was very visible to passers-by in Market Street and so its upper storeys are also in brick. There is a vestry on the rear of the building. The main windows on the front are a variant of geometric decorated style with some influence of the north-Italian Lombardic style then popular. The side chapel windows are in the simple 'Early English' lancet style while the basement windows are domestic in character. The surrounding iron railings and gates, characteristic of chapels, are as usual a local design, in this case by W A Baker & Co Ltd. of the Westgate Ironworks, Newport.

Johnson also designed the Whitefield Memorial English Presbyterian Chapel in Abergavenny (1907-10) and the Unitarian Chapel in Merthyr Tydfil (1901-03) in more modern Edwardian style.

When visited in 1998 Bethany was disused and when revisited on 23.04.08 it was marked as being sold. The chapel is listed as an historic building by Cadw.

RCAHMW, 2008 - using the Cadw listed building description & notes on 'chapel architects' by Julian Orbach.