Name: Orchard Place Baptist Chapel

Denomination: Baptist

Built: 1839 Rebuilt: 1872

Photography: John Ball
Date: 2 February 1998
Camera: Agfa ePhoto307 digital

Notes:
1. The first chapel was built in 1839, being heavily modified or rebuilt in 1872 and modified again in 1903; the date of the present chapel is 1872. It was probably originally called Orchard Road not Place. [Source: Coflein database (NPRN 9949)]
2. Baptist services in English began in the Neath area around 1839, when a chapel was built on a site between Neath and Neath Abbey. The congregation had a troubled early history, and their chapel was eventually bought by the vicar of Cadoxton for Anglican worship in 1855. Meanwhile the Baptists began to meet at Tabernacle, the old Welsh Baptist chapel in Water Street, which once again became the 'halfway house' for a congregation. Within seventeen years the premises proved to be too small, and this striking chapel in Orchard Place was built in 1872. [Source: Local Information Sheet 20 – Neath, Chapels Heritage Society, undated; accessible as a PDF document on-line from the Capel (Chapels Heritage Society) website]