# Capel Peniel

Capel Peniel in Tremadog, Gwynedd, Wales, is a former Calvinist Methodist chapel built in 1808–1809 and completed, to the original plans, in 1849. Among the earliest, if not the earliest, chapel in Wales built to a Neoclassical design, it was hugely influential on subsequent chapel-building throughout the country. Closed as a chapel in 2010, it suffered neglect and was placed on the Heritage at Risk Register before restoration in the 2020s. It now functions as a community hall and is a Grade I listed building.

## History

The chapel was built under the patronage, and possibly to the design, of William Madocks. A London-born entrepreneur, Madocks bought land around Porthmadog in Gwynedd, and developed both that and the settlement of Tremadog as speculative enterprises intended to capitalise on the trade route between London and Ireland. Architectural historians suggest that the main inspiration was the London church of St Paul's, Covent Garden, designed by Inigo Jones in 1639. The main body of the chapel was completed between 1808 and 1809, although the erection of the portico was delayed until 1849 owing to a lack of necessary funds. The building attracted interest from its construction. Richard Colt Hoare recorded it in 1810, and was shortly after followed by Richard Fenton, who mentioned the chapel in his 1813 publication, Tours in Wales (1804–1813). The construction of a Nonconformist place of worship angered the Anglican Bishop of Bangor; Madocks responded by the reassurance that; "the church is built on rocks, the chapel is built on sand".
The building ceased to function as an active chapel in 2010 due to a falling congregation and rising maintenance costs and was sold to Addoldai Cymru (the Welsh Religious Buildings Trust) for a nominal sum. Funding for repairs to the roof and portico were secured from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and work was completed in 2020. The contractor was Donald Insall Associates, an architecture practice specialising in historic building restoration. The building now operates as a community hall.

## Architecture and influence

John B. Hilling, in his 2018 study, The Architecture of Wales: From the First to the Twenty-first Century, calls Peniel the "harbinger of the style that was to dominate chapel building in Wales". Richard Haslam, Julian Orbach and Adam Voelcker, in their 2009 edition Gwynedd, in the Buildings of Wales series, suggest that the building is unsophisticated, which in all likelihood indicates that, as was common in non-metropolitan centres, the unknown designer was working from what he had seen, either in life or in pattern books, the publication of which soared in the 19th century. Haslam, Orbach and Voelcker note that the Tuscan columns of the portico lack entasis (curvature), suggesting that the designer was not a trained architect, but they nonetheless appreciate the chapel's "naïve charm". The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales considers that Welsh non-conformist chapel building, of which Peniel is an important example, amounts to a "national architecture" of Wales.
Peniel is built of rubble stone which was painted from the first. The roof is of Welsh slate. The portico is supported by two Tuscan columns and the pediment has a central Oeil-de-boeuf window. The interior retains many of its 19th century fittings, including side galleries, numbered box pews, and the pulpit. Anthony Jones, in his study Welsh Chapels published in 1996, suggests that Peniel's interior, with side galleries and a raked floor giving congregations a better view of the minister in their centrally-placed pulpit, became "the standard format for virtually every chapel built in Wales after 1850". The chapel is a Grade I listed building.

## Gallery

* The chapel in 1986 when still in use
* The chapel in 2011 when in disrepair
* The interior in 2012, just after closure