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Refurbishment of the Ebenezer United Reform Church to a dwelling.
We purchased the Church on the 13th January 2012.
The Church is located on the main road going through Amroth and look's directly onto the sea.
A brief history on the Church can be found at:
http://ebenezeramroth.blogspot.com/
This history on the Church has been put together by Mrs Ruth Robert's.
Mr. Gary Davies also provided some wonderful information on the history of the Church:
CONSTRUCTING THE CHAPEL IN 1867
Ebenezer’s construction was a mighty task as the land it was to be built on was steeply sloping. A 5-metre step in the cliff had to be excavated by hand. A task probably made easier by the miners labouring at the other end of the village. This step in the cliff was higher than the road so that the building was elevated above the couple of houses that had already been built along the cliff.
The only dressed stone in the building are the quoins around the door, windows and on the corners of the building. The stone for the foundations, dwarf walls for the floor, walls of the building, the retaining wall at the rear of the building and the Burial Ground boundary walls were taken from the beach and used without dressing. The West wall of the Chapel was built against the cliff because there were no houses on this side of the building, later in approx 1881 No 1 and 2 Rock Terrace were built next to the Chapel, but when they were constructing the houses they left a strip of bank as a way of getting to the garden behind No 2. This strip of bank will continue to cause problems to the side of the Chapel until it is sorted out one way or another.
The internal walls of the building when it was first opened were lime plastered and coloured with a pink limewash. Later on, maybe around 1900, the east, west and north walls were channelled out for grounds and panelled with diagonal pine boarding, with mouldings covering the joints. These panels stopped at the top of the pews as they were fixed to the sidewalls and mortised into the floorboards so that they could not be moved. The south wall at a later date probably 1951/2 was stripped of its lime plaster and rendered with Portland cement.
The floor is made up of four dwarf walls running the length of the building, forming five bays across the floor space, these walls are approximately 280mm wide x 225mm high, and sit directly on the bedrock. Mortared on top of the dwarf walls are 25mm x 85mm wallplates, which support 70mm x 90mm joists at 600mm centres, the ends of the joist are supported on a 100mm ledge that is part of the foundation plinth of the east and west walls. The joists are cut square on three sides and left rough on the underside, to level the top of the joists a chunk of wood was taken out of the underside with a hatchet where the joist passed over the wallplate. This process was also done to fit and level the floorboards; these were planed on three sides to roughly 30mm in thickness, varying in width between 180/200mm and left sawn on the underside.
The roof structure is a double roof this comprises of three king post trusses, dividing the roof space into four bays, fixed on each side of the trusses are four purlins running from the north gable wall to the south gable wall and the ends are built into each wall. On top of the purlins running from the ridge board to the wall plate are the common rafters, which take the slating battens and slates. The ends of the ceiling timbers are supported by 25mm x 25mm strips fixed to the collar/ties of the trusses and to the lower parts of the rafters of the trusses. Originally the internal ceiling covering was of lath and plaster construction but is now plasterboard.
Other fixtures in the building that were present when the building was first opened are the pews and pulpit. The original pews no longer exist having been taken out in the late 1950s and replaced by more comfortable, moveable ones. But evidence from the floor and walls of the Chapel shows that one end was fixed to the wall by wooden plugs inserted into the wall and the other end having two feet which were mortised into the floorboards. The spacing between the pews was 445mm. There was also a pew on each side wall of the Chapel facing the side of the pulpit, this utilised all the usable floor space available in the building. The strip of floorboards from the door to the pulpit was varnished but underneath the pews the boards were left untreated and bare. The pulpit was made in a local workshop having moulded handrails and simply turned balustrades; the finished pieces were then brought into the building and assembled. The vertical posts of the pulpit are mortised into the floorboards, which makes a secure fixing for the structure. The steps on each side of the pulpit were then fixed in place and the floorboards of the pulpit were fixed to a framework of joists, these are supported off the plinth of the recess that is formed in the north wall, this recess increases the floor area of the pulpit, allowing the pulpit seat to be back out of the way of the steps. A bible rest was provided permanently fixed at an angle to the top of the front of the pulpit. A small cupboard was built into the space under the right side of the pulpit at the time it was constructed and a door in the front allows the rest of the space under the pulpit to be used as a larger cupboard. A small seat in the way of a simple plank, which is provided for the minister to conduct communion from is held on to the front of the pulpit by two wrought iron brackets. The stonework underneath the pulpit was never finished with lime plaster, allowing us to see the construction of the recess behind the pulpit today.
Members of the community including builders John and Luther Phelps and the village carpenter Ben James may have carried out the work on the Chapel for the main building contractor Mr James Rogers of Tenby, Builder, whose name appears as a Trustee in the 1869 handover of the running of the Chapel. Mr James Rogers was the building contractor who building the Congregational Church in Tenby at the same time that Ebenezer was being built.
We intend to keep you updated on all aspects of the conversion work.
