Here we have taken on the neat and tiny cottage built before 1750 on to the end of one of Wales’s shrines of Nonconformity, the Maesyronen chapel. The chapel itself, converted from a barn in 1696, dates from the early vernacular days when any suitable building was made use of for enthusiastic worship. Although officially founded just after the Act of Toleration, it had probably been used for secret meetings before that, which explains its isolated position. Its simple layout and furniture, added as and when the congregation could afford it, follows the basic pattern that prevailed for the next two centuries. It has high box-pews and a higher pulpit, lit from behind by a window, and all of a plainness that fully conveys the essentials of this new and radical rural faith.

The chapel, where services are still held, is cared for by Trustees, who asked for our help. By taking a lease on the cottage we hope we have given both buildings a future. Staying here, perched on a high shelf above the Wye (wrapped up warmly in winter), you can look out across the Black Mountains. Here you can sample a different and earlier kind of life from one that has tended to eclipse it in the public imagination, that which grew up around the chapels of the South Wales valleys in the nineteenth century.

View our history sheet for this Landmark

Sleeps: 4