Religious Conversion

I know exactly what I’m going to Blip today. Architectural Glimpses - it’s got to be the castle in Conwy. There are  so many possibilities for interesting angles, alternative views .... But then I see a hive of activity outside a disused chapel, empty for some 20 years, boarded up, overgrown (in ‘extras’). 

This morning, there’s an opening in the site fencing, and the chapel door’s ajar. I glimpse a gaping hole where once the chapel interior stood, a mechanical digger silhouetted where the rear wall has been opened up. This was once the ‘Set Fawr’, the ‘big seat’ where the minister and chapel deacons would be raised above the congregation. 

Of course, the usual safety notices are there, banning unauthorised entry, but a builder tells me I can go just to the chapel entrance.  Engedi Welsh Calvinist Methodist Chapel has been completely gutted, brick scars telling where the first floor chapel balcony once stood, the once-pewed floor scattered with the detritus of building work. The dark-wood roof timbers seem untouched, however, the structure sound. An architectural glimpse - and one I’m unlikely to repeat. 

The chapel, dating from 1878, is now undergoing a £3 million conversion into luxury apartments, its developers, Gothic and Stone securing local stone masons and stain glass restorers with “artisan skills missing in large cities’ 

Wales is littered with the remnants of the nonconformist surge which swept the nation in previous centuries; it is estimated that one chapel was built in Wales every 8 days in C19th. Built with the savings of the local people who also selected and paid their minister and elected deacons - what would they think of their transformation into carpet warehouses, curry houses and luxury apartments? 

In its hay day, this chapel would be plain and unadorned - a world away from luxury. No paintings, certainly no crucifix - the current ‘First Aid’ cross scrawled on the wall ironically out of place. 

Extract from ‘Welsh Testament’ - R S Thomas
Even God has a Welsh name:
We spoke to him in the old language;
He was to have a peculiar care
For the Welsh people. History showed us
He was too big to be nailed to the wall
Of a stone chapel, yet we crammed him
Between the boards of a black book.

Thanks to PelorusJack for hosting.