Bethania Baptist Chapel was built in 1850, rebuilt in 1869 and modified in 1887. The present building, dated 1869, is built in the Sub-Classical style and with a gable-entry plan

RCAHMW, June 2009.

Bethania Baptist Chapel, 1869

An economically-built chapel in simplified Italianate style with Bath cut-stone dressings only applied around opening and corners but unusually on the chapel sides to the same extent as the main gable front. The mass-walling is of local Pennant sandstone. All the windows have a simplified form of Florentine tracery but with the capping circular opening replaced by a vertical bar to the top of the arch, a common variant to the original Italian prototypes as used in chapel architecture. The arched-Venetian window over the central doorway has again been modified from the usual form with a higher springing to the central arch so that all three arches are not greatly different in height. In the centre of the open gable, which lacks the pediment base running across at wall-height found in more elaborate Llanelli chapels, is an oval date and name plaque of common Llanelli type but lacking the elegant proportions of those used elsewhere. In a final confusion of styles is the gothic quatrefoil attic ventilator in the apex of the gable. The 1905 nonconformist statistics reveal that this chapel had an average 800 seating capacity in 1905 with a fairly large Sunday School provision of 350. The congregation also had a caretaker's house attached.

Stephen R. Hughes, RCAHMW, 06.09.2007