The Lost Chapels

A tiny rural chapel hidden and forgotten in the Welsh countryside. At most this room would have accommodated 20 worshippers including a local priest and an organist. During the 18th century Wales was still an overwhelmingly rural country with a population of little more than 500,000. Before the industrial revolution the vast majority of people here lived and worked off the land in small, disconnected communities. Without the funds or the manpower that more populated areas recieved from their Christian parishes, they had to come together to build their own chapels in order to congregate together for worship. Unlike the 'tin chapels' in one of my previous projects that started appearing around a century later, these were built by hand using mostly granite and slate that has always been in abundance across their country. As religious culture has changed throughout the centuries, only 12% of people in Wales now routinely attend their local churches, and these buildings that once relied on their communities for maintenance have become overgrown and forgotten. The fact that many are still standing however is a testament to the way they were built, in some instances more than two centuries ago.