Presbyterian Church of Wales recently completed a survey of its properties and found that at least £35 million would be needed to repair every Presbyterian chapel. Cadw, on the advice of the Historic Buildings Council for Wales, has given grant aid for the repair of some chapels in use but over the last four year period this has averaged only £87,500 per year. The problem of the availability of grant aid is increased by the refusal of Welsh Nonconformity to accept Heritage Lottery Fund grants because of a fundamental opposition to gambling. Although the working party's brief was defined as redundant chapels, the viability of chapels in use is inextricably linked with redundancy - as when Richard Wilding (1990) showed how English Heritage grants to fund repairs to Church of England churches, have reduced the likelihood of churches being declared redundant. LOCALAUTHORITIES Local authorities should have a key role to play in the stewardship of the historic environment and are the primary implementers of historic building legislation. The report was critical of the past performance of local authorities in assisting chapels to survive and we believed there must be a correlation to the small numbers oflisted buildings in Wales. If Wales had today 40,000 listed buildings then we concluded that the development control casework would have encouraged greater employment of Conservation Officers and also council members and the public would be more aware of heritage issues and policies. ACO members accept that most historic buildings are a valuable material resource and that most historic chapels may be put to an alternative good economic use, but the argument still has to be won in Wales. It is not helped by the fact that there are only about 20 ACO members in Wales. ADVICE The plight of chapels of significance which become redundant cannot be divorced from the related complaint from the denominations that useful advice is not available for chapel congregations on the maintenance and even re-use of chapels. We recommended that the provision of specialist advice is a priority. In view of the constraints upon central and local government finance, the report recommended that an independent advisory body be set up to help chapels authorities. The report examined the question "what do you do with a redundant CONTEXT 52 A typical Welsb chapel, Camartben, West Wales. chapel?". In the future the denominational bodies will be considering more often possible new uses for redundant buildings. If time allows for discussions about the fate of individual buildings or if a strategy has been carefully resolved for a whole community, there is the chance that a beneficial solution will be found. But too often, in the past, efforts have not been co-ordinated and time has run out for an historic building that possibly has been neglected for a lengthy period. Bethesda Baptist Chapel in the University town of Swansea - one of only 16 Grade I chapels in Wales - was sold for housing after years of standing empty. Some chapels, like Bethesda have a strong claim to be preserved as they now exist. The report noted examples of bodies saving buildings such as the excellent Museum of Welsh Life at St Fagans near Cardiff which has preserved vernacular buildings including a chapel, by transporting them to a safe site. This practice has been used in Wales at Margam and in the Rhondda to deal questionably with outstanding buildings that get in the way of modern development. So far, however, there is no organisation to preserve redundant chapels in their locality in Wales. The report stated unequivocally that there is an role for a body to hold examples of redundant historic chapels for future generations. RECORDING It was the view of the religious representatives who spoke to the working party that, although the denominations often prefer individual chapels not to be included on the statutory lists of architectural or historic interest, they did recognise and accept the general 29
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