Addoldai Cymru: How Wales Set Out to Keep a Selection of Its Closed Chapels

By the close of the twentieth century, a growing number of Nonconformist chapels and other places of worship in Wales were shutting their doors. Addoldai Cymru, the Welsh Religious Buildings Trust, was created in response. Its history is that of a body given a defined and deliberately limited task. That task is to keep a chosen group of these buildings standing and cared for.

A trust born of closures

The idea came from Cadw, the Welsh government’s historic environment service. Faced with the rising rate of closures, Cadw took the initiative in establishing a trust devoted to redundant places of worship. Cadw also provides the trust’s funding.

The organisation was incorporated on 2 November 1999. It was set up as a company limited by guarantee without share capital, under company number 03870343.

From chapels to religious buildings

The company’s first registered name was Ymddiriedolaeth Capeli Cymru Wales Chapels Trust. On 14 January 2000 it adopted the name it still carries: Ymddiriedolaeth Addoldai Cymru Welsh Religious Buildings Trust.

The broader title fits the remit. The trust exists to take into its care, conserve and repair redundant non-Anglican religious buildings in Wales. Nonconformist chapels make up most of them.

The remit is selective rather than comprehensive. The trust looks for a representative selection, made up of buildings of particular historic or architectural significance.

Two chapels, north and south

In 2005 the trust acquired Hen Dŷ Cwrdd at Trecynon, near Aberdare. The Unitarian chapel had been built in 1862. It had closed in 1988, so it had stood without a congregation for seventeen years before the trust took it on.

In the north, the trust owns Capel Peniel in Tremadog, Gwynedd. It is a Calvinistic Methodist chapel listed at Grade I. The trust has restored the building and continues to maintain it.

Peniel was more than a building in the trust’s care. For a time, its schoolroom served as the trust’s main office.

Telling the wider story

Conserving individual chapels was only one part of the trust’s work. Working with the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, Addoldai Cymru created an online ‘virtual museum’.

Titled The Story of Nonconformity in Wales and hosted at welshchapels.org, it was produced under the Digital Dissent project. Visit Wales funded the work through its Digital Tourism Framework Programme.

A move south and a growing portfolio

The trust’s base eventually moved from Tremadog to Maesteg. Its registered office is now Capel Salem, on Picton Street in Nantyffyllon.

By 2024 the trust had 11 chapels in its care across Wales. In the same year it received a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to repair and interpret Hen Dŷ Cwrdd in Trecynon.

The work today

The trust’s core activity remains the one set out at its founding. It holds redundant buildings, conserves their fabric and carries out repairs. Its funding still comes from Cadw.

Owning a chapel is not the same as making it accessible. The trust opens its buildings to the public through Cadw’s Open Doors heritage programme. Capel Peniel in Tremadog and Hen Dŷ Cwrdd in Trecynon have both taken part.

Through these openings, buildings that have lost their congregations still receive visitors. The trust’s work turns on that balance between conservation and public access.

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