Listed chapel once heart of a community set to be converted into home

A LISTED chapel once at the heart of a Welsh-speaking community and a symbol of "cultural and linguistic resilience" has been granted permission to become a home.

- By DALE SPRIDGEON

An application to convert the former Wesleyan chapel Capel Soar has been approved by Eryri national park planners.

Soar, near Talsarnau, is a hamlet set under the dramatic landscape of Allt Cefn Trefor and Clogwyn Gwyn.

The Grade II listed chapel closed around seven years ago with its last service chronicled on a YouTube video held in the People's Collection of Wales online archive.

Historically, it was not only a place of worship but "the social and cultural nucleus" for the area, supporting a range of community functions.

An historic building report points to it hosting Sunday Schools and educational sessions that taught reading, scripture and moral lessons, long before universal education existed and which helped to raise Welsh and English literacy.

The chapel's raised pulpit would not only have been used for firebrand preaching but also to address matters of civic and local importance.

Hymn singing was also central to Welsh Non-Conformist chapel life and it also showcased community participation and musical tradition.

The chapel, the report notes, also "embodied" Welsh-speaking religious independence in a period when Anglicanism was often associated with English landowners, the Crown and imposed values.

"As such it was a symbol of cultural and linguistic resilience".

The custodians of Capel Soar since 2022, Claire and Christopher Helps, want to convert the chapel as a home but plans describe a continuation of links to the community.