Trinity Chapel was built in 1858 and rebuilt in 1867 by architect Thomas Thomas of Landore. The chapel was refronted in 1918 then modified again in 1926. The present building, dated 1867, is in Gothic style and of the gable entry type.

RCAHMW, June 2009

Trinity Calvinistic Methodist Chapel, 1858, re-fronted 1926.

The sides, rear and interior of this chapel form a late example of a `hipped-box' design (probably by the architect-minister Thomas Thomas) which was a common early nineteenth-century type with a high pyramidal roof over a square or broad rectangular plan. It represents an intermediate design built between earlier rural `long-wall' chapels and the more elaborate `show-front' urban and rural designs but Thomas commonly used it as it allowed the chapel to have a front profile that was mor sophisticated than the usual great-shed outline. The often later `show-fronts' had narrow but expensive facades built towards the street by confident and wealthier congregations after the great 1859 revival. However the Trinity congregation, along with many others, attempted to catch-up with fashion by having an elaborate front added to the earlier chapel with a central gabled bay, flanked by staircase wings which were also gabled to the sides, all with large traceried gothic windows. The modest Georgian-style sash windows of the earlier chapel were retained but on the upper tier had gothic heads added above the simple sashes. William Griffiths was the local architect who added the one-bay deep fully `church-gothic' facade which at this date had become acceptable to confident Welsh non-conformists, now themselves part of the establishment. The perpendicular tracery of the large elaborate window over the central street entrance represents the one exclusively British type of gothic, perhaps appropriately patriotic after the First World War (the date of the chapel front may be before 1926), and the grey ceramic dressings and tracery are typical of the period. At the time of the 1905 religious census this had a seating capacity of 768 and its adjoining schoolroom had 575 which was the third largest nonconformist Sunday School capacity in Llanelli and it had a `chapel house' for a caretaker.

Stephen R. Hughes, RCAHMW, 06.09.2007