Nebo Chapel Restoration Home

Once we walked through that gate we were hooked.

When I look at that house, I just think, "Wow,"

and every time I see it I'm just like, "Wow."

It's a castle, it's a castle! How can you not buy a castle?

Wow, that's some fireplace.

It's going to be an amazing home.

First day of the rest of its life.

You happy?

We are way, way, way over budget.

I mean, I am actually living in a building site.

You have to make sacrifices.

There are days when you just think, "Have we made the right decision?

"Are we doing the right thing?"

I want it to look what it looked like when it was first built.

Oh, this is just such a beautiful place.

It's like every romantic part of my brain is just firing.

You don't have any idea of how much money this is going to cost you?

I don't think either of us envisaged quite as big a project

as we've actually taken on.

It's still a dream.

It's still a dream that we're actually doing it.

I can't wait to move in. It seems just to take forever.

Just a nightmare.

I'm telling myself not to worry.

I mean, what can I do? I've got to finish the house.

This is Nebo Chapel,

which sits in a prominent position in Hirwaun,

an old mining village in south Wales.

Once the heart and soul of the community,

today Nebo is bleak, dismal and, worst of all, empty.

The roof is letting in water,

the timbers are rotten and the walls are crumbling,

threatening the future of the chapel's 19th-century interior.

Nebo Chapel has lost its way.

But there's about to be a resurrection for this Nonconformist chapel

because Nebo has two new disciples, Alan and Hayley.

I showed Al lots of properties on the auction websites

because I really enjoy looking at properties.

I said, "Oh, let's buy a chapel" as a joke and then he turned round

and said, "Oh, yeah, OK, great, let's look at it."

So we did, and we ended up buying it.

In October 2011, Alan from London and Hayley from Cardiff

became the proud owners of this historic building

for the heavenly sum of £25,000.

When we walked in and saw it, it was a real dream.

Beautiful windows, the pews, the pulpit, everything.

You just walk into the building and you just fall in love with it.

It's special.

There has been a chapel on this site since 1823,

although the Nebo we see today was erected in 1851,

and seated 800 worshippers.

A dwindling congregation led to its closure in 2007.

I love old buildings. I just think they're just beautiful.

It's got history, so you want to make sure the history's there

-for the future.

-Future generations, yeah.

After buying Nebo,

Hayley and Alan successfully applied for planning permission

to change the use of the chapel to residential.

Alan, who works as a building surveyor,

made a 3D model to illustrate his proposal.

His design has to take into consideration

the planning restrictions surrounding this Grade II listed building.

It's not necessarily just about achieving planning policy,

it's about making sure the proposals fit in with the community's

expectations of the structure.

It meant something to many people in the past,

and the proposals needed to be sympathetic to that

and honour those memories and respect the structure as it was.

Externally, we're not actually doing much to change the structure.

Most of the works will go on inside.

The first stage is the conversion of the vestry.

Here, Hayley and Alan will build internal walls

to create three bedrooms downstairs, an en-suite and a family bathroom.

Upstairs will be an en-suite bedroom

and an en-suite accessed from the downstairs master bedroom.

Stage two of the project, the chapel, happens at a later date.

this will be a much bigger job

and as planning regulations state it cannot be divided up,

they will retain the open-plan layout

and turn it into a large living space and an office

with a kitchen, dining area and lounge upstairs.

But this is a high-risk restoration.

They only have the money to get started on the vestry.

They don't have enough to finish it.

We've only got 20 grand to play with initially.

It's not a lot of money at all, really.

Yeah, it's making me nervous.

We have to sort of beg, borrow and steal sort of to do it.

Sometimes you need to take risks in life to get what you want.

But the gamble will pay off if they can get enough work completed

to convince the bank to give them a mortgage.

This would fund further restoration.

In spite of having full-time jobs, these novices are attempting

to do the whole build themselves.

It's a tiny budget for such an ambitious project

so they're having to watch every single penny.

We've been digging the trenches for about four full days.

We did look at the costs for a mini digger and we'd rather save

the £300 now and then when it comes to sort of buying something

like a shower or a box of tiles, you can't use your physical labour

or your enthusiasm to produce those things, you have to go and buy them.

This is no ordinary restoration.

We've never seen a budget so low for a building as big

but if Alan and Hayley can pull this project off,

they will have the forever home of their dreams.

Time for me to find out why they're willing to risk it all

on Nebo Chapel.

Lovely to meet you, Alan. Really good to meet you.

-Lovely to meet you, hi.

-Hello, Hayley.

And here it is, the fabulous chapel.

It's an amazing building, isn't it?

It is, it really is.

You've got such scope to really do

exactly what you want with this property.

Is that part of the attraction for you, Hayley?

Yeah, I think so, I think so.

Obviously Al's got the skills to sort of draw the plans

and things, so, it's a sort of real bonus for us, really,

the fact that we can design it as we want it, and what we need.

Is one of you going to take control of the finances?

Well, Al's sort of allocated the finances to me.

How's that?

You know, it's OK!

Al inevitably ends up doing everything,

I have to be honest, and I just do what I'm told.

Mix the cement, carry the buckets, you know.

This is the upstairs.

It's incredible!

Isn't it a weird thought thinking of 800 faithful locals

sitting in here staring down at the pulpit?

Yeah, absolutely.

Is that a nice feeling to know you're going to be living in that environment?

-Yeah, it is quite a nice feeling, isn't it?

-It is, yeah.

It's going to be something special, isn't it?

Alan and Hayley are not able to get a mortgage to help restore the chapel

until significant building work has been done.

There's no money in the budget for professional trades.

There's a hell of a lot of pressure on you - are you worried?

A little worried, yeah.

This is the first property I've ever owned.

We've done sort of bits and pieces together in the past,

but it's very, very small.

You know, decorating bedrooms and things like that.

It's quite a big leap from doing a little bit of decorating together

to buying a huge, almost derelict chapel, isn't it?

Was there no point you thought maybe we'll start with a terraced house?

There's times when I think, "why didn't we just buy a normal property?"

You know, new kitchen, new bathroom, easy.

But I don't think that's our characters.

We like unusual things, we like to do...

If there's an easy way or a hard way,

we'll pick the hard way every time.

But Alan and Hayley's £20,000 will barely touch the chapel

so they're starting this restoration at the back of the building,

in the vestry.

Gosh, wow, it's enormous as well, isn't it?

It's a very beautiful space, isn't it, this?

Yeah, it is a beautiful space. It's gone back to its skeleton.

When we bought it, it was like a school, Sunday school.

A Sunday school, just a Sunday school.

It's just a big hall and we've stripped it right back to its skeleton

just to sort of identify defects

and just so we can... blank canvas and start again.

This area here will become the master bedroom, so be bedroom one.

Within bedroom one, there'll be a small narrow staircase

which will lead up to an en-suite bathroom.

The idea is that you'll sit in the bath

and your eye level will be at the window.

Oh, God, how lovely. I like that.

Very pleased with that, is Al. Yeah, no, I don't blame you.

Because money is so tight on this,

and I think this might be one of the tightest budgets

I've ever come across, what are you doing

to make sure that there's no wastage here?

Anything and everything.

I mean, to take the digging of the foundations as an example,

on a normal project, people might excavate the spoil

and have it sort of carted off site.

We costed that and that was going to be about £1,500.

That would be a huge proportion of our budget,

so what we done was we spent £250 on railway sleepers,

we put them in the garden, formed a structure

and we deposited all the spoil from here into the railway sleepers.

Formed our garden area at different tiers

and we've not got to get rid of any spoil or anything like that.

That's incredible.

Hang on a minute. I thought you were meant to be doing this on your own?

There are loads of people back here. Who are all these people?

Al's son, Lewis, my two sisters, Madison and Lydia,

my daughter Shannon and my dad's here as well.

It's quite a project for them to do on their own, isn't it?

Yes, I think they're very brave, really.

What about you, Shannon,

do you feel this is going to be a successful project?

I'm not sure. I think it's a bit too much.

Are you helping at all?

Not really!

Alan and Hayley know very little about the old chapel

that still sits proudly in the village of Hirwaun.

As they struggle to transform it into their home,

Dr Kate Williams will attempt to uncover what it has meant

to generations of this community.

Meanwhile, Kieran Long will attempt to understand

the secrets and stories that may be hidden in its architecture,

starting in Hirwaun, home to Nebo.

Well, it's fascinating standing on this spot in Hirwaun,

because you immediately see, strikingly, three chapels

within, you know, within sight. And that tells you something.

That tells you that these were built at a time of new thinking

about religion and differences between people's beliefs.

It tells you that Hirwaun is a place of independent thought,

of new thinking about religion and the buildings prove that.

You can imagine, late 19th century, Sunday morning,

everybody's day off from the mine. You know, meeting here,

passing the time of day, getting the village news.

And, now, what modern planning has done to that brilliant context

for social life, is build a public toilet in the middle of it.

It's like the worst insult to a kind of urbanism,

to a kind of arrangement that really gives the heart and soul

to a place, has been torn out of it by a public loo.

You come up this path, up this rise to the highest point

in the whole town and here's this quite imposing symmetrical facade.

This is a chapel but it needs a sign on it telling you it's a chapel.

That's not what we think of in terms of church architecture.

We normally know exactly what a church looks like.

Nebo Chapel was a place for Nonconformist worship.

Nonconformism refers to a number of religious groups,

such as Methodists and Baptists, who were members of a Protestant faith

but had a more modest approach to worshipping than the established Church.

This is reflected in the architecture at Nebo.

Well, it's an amazing space.

This kind of high, naturally-lit barn

with this beautiful arcade in here.

In front of us there's no altar, no sort of sacrificial symbolism.

It's just a pulpit with a place to read.

And even this clock, that I love,

it's the kind of clock you might find in a station, or in an office.

It's not anything elaborate.

Well, at the beginning of the 19th century, in architectural terms,

the fashion is Gothic architecture, especially in churches.

All of those churches are in a way designed to make you feel quite small. This is the house of God.

This, of course, is a completely different kind of architecture.

You don't feel like you're up in the rafters here.

This is kind of very generous space,

and it really tells you what this building's all about.

It's about light and it's about view.

It's absolutely about that connection with the pulpit.

These are meeting houses, not churches.

They're not places of worship so much as places of a community

coming together and sharing their beliefs.

Now, this kind of stuff started in the upper rooms of pubs or in people's homes.

This kind of reform religion began as a bottom-up community thing.

And I think the roots of this religion

beginning in somebody's home remains in the design of these buildings.

Rebuilt in 1851, Nebo is one of over 5,000 chapels

constructed in Wales during the 19th century.

Kieran's task is to understand where Nebo Chapel sits in that story.

It's another day at the chapel for Alan.

He's spent every spare hour of the last five months on site

and it's finally beginning to pay off.

It feels like we're progressing, and quickly,

which is nice because.... doing the digging the trenches

and doing foundations and doing the strip out seems to have taken ages

and now we're putting walls up and starting to form rooms, it really feels like it's moving.

Compared to Hayley's cement, my cement's rubbish.

When Hayley mixes it, she gets the consistency right every time.

I miss having Hayley up here when she's not here to help.

My experience in terms of brick and block work is limited to a degree.

I mean, we've done brick ponds and brick walls in the garden

but that's in the garden - it doesn't matter if you go too wrong with that.

This is the first time I've really done a block wall to form a room

and to sort of take a load off the floor.

As long it don't fall down, I'll be happy.

Hayley's back to pass a critical eye.

Been busy. Al's done quite a lot today actually.

Sort of, once you start seeing the walls up and you start seeing

the room sort of being formed, it gets quite exciting.

Although I do get a bit jealous.

I'm like, "Oh, I would have liked to have been here myself." So...

I wish you were here because I'm not very good at mixing the cement.

I was going to say, your cement looks a little bit sloppy up there.

-Yeah, it was a bit in places, yeah.

-You've done a good job.

-I did say I missed you.

Ah, you've done a good job. It's really good.

Alongside block walls in the vestry,

there's also damage to the 19th century chapel to restore.

He's starting in the rafters, some of which are rotten, thanks to a leaky roof.

Our plan for today is to reinstate a timber framework that we've taken down.

The timbers that we've removed were just completely rotten.

The rigidity of the plaster was probably the only thing holding them up. They were just gone.

I mean, when we first bought the chapel,

we anticipated having to do a degree of repair works.

I didn't anticipate having to do the extent that it is now,

but that's just part and parcel of what you get when you buy an old building.

You get a real sense of sort of space when you're up this high and when you're up with the gods.

I can stand here and sort of visualise the finished living space

and the dining space, the kitchen area.

I am scared of heights.

That's why you might catch me every now and then just holding on

to something, just to sort of ease myself, really.

Each nail that I drive into the timbers, like,

it's one less nail I've got to worry about.

It's a step closer to sort of reinstating the ceiling

and finishing off this section of the works,

and then sort of moving on to the next.

To find the beginnings of Nonconformist religion,

Kate's looking back almost 500 years

to when Henry VIII changed the course of British history.

He broke away from the Roman Catholic Church

and established the Church of England.

In the aftermath of the English Reformation in the 1540s,

many people in Britain felt that Henry VIII hadn't gone far enough in Protestantism.

Really, he pretty much kept the Church of Rome in terms

of its trappings, in terms of its appearance,

and these people wanted a much more stripped-down form of Protestantism.

Nonconformism was banned as it was a threat to the Church of England

and those who practised Nonconformist worship were victimised by the state.

Nonconformists began as secret persecuted groups of people,

but they soon came to dominate great swathes of our nation.

And that's why Nebo Chapel should be a window into this incredible story.

Following the Reformation in the 16th century,

attitudes to religion fundamentally changed.

This was also reflected in architecture.

Kieran's come to London to the first new church to be built after the Reformation.

And like Nebo, it doesn't look like a typical place of worship.

In fact, at the time, it looked like nothing else.

Well, we've come to one of the most influential churches built anywhere in Britain,

Inigo Jones' Saint Paul's Church at Covent Garden in London.

When this building was completed in 1633, it would have been

completely alien to the rest of London.

London was a medieval city, more or less, still then.

This whole piazza would have been an open space, no market then in Covent Garden,

and it would have commanded it with this Tuscan portico.

This is the first entry of polite architecture,

of classical architecture, into the UK.

Saint Paul's Church had a profound influence,

because it was the idea that you could bring different architectural styles from Greece and Rome

to the UK for a kind of institutional building, for a religious building.

And this was something that, in the 19th century,

Nonconformism was to take up and to deploy on their own churches.

This is the start of a whole movement that leads

to a transformation in the way that Nonconformist chapels were built,

and also explains how Nebo sits in that amazing chronology.

17th-century worshippers at Saint Paul's followed the Church of England

but for those who did not conform with the religion of the country, there were strict penalties.

Kate has come to the home of the nation's greatest collection of Nonconformist literature,

Dr Williams' Library.

What I've come to look for is records of these Nonconformists.

How life, how they proceeded in the late 17th century when they were,

you know, being persecuted, when they were looked down on.

They were really hated by many people in society.

Well, this is this incredible document.

I mean, it's really a great privilege for me to see it.

A Nonconformist minister, Phillip Henry, his daughter, Sarah Henry,

she wrote down all his sermons,

and what is a really exciting moment is here, when she stops writing sermons,

because at this point her father is being taken away.

He's been imprisoned simply for being a Nonconformist minister.

And what he says to them is really terribly moving.

He says, "If this were the last time I were to speak to you,

"as for ought I know it may, this should be my exaltation."

He's saying, "Don't forget me, these are my words."

And he goes on to remind them of their Christian duty, he says,

"Wherefore my beloved, as you have always obeyed,

"not in my presence only, but now much more in my absence.

"Work about your own salvation with fear and trembling.

"For it is God that worketh in you."

Towards the end of the 17th century, and now under the rule of James II,

Nonconformists had endured 150 years of repression.

But a revolution would follow.

Kate has come to the parliamentary archives to see what happened next.

Attitudes to the freedom of worship fundamentally changed for ever

when William and his wife, Mary, came to the throne in 1689.

Parliament said, "Look, come on over, come and be king".

This king who seemed very fair, very tolerant.

He arrived, incredibly popular.

He cemented his popularity, William, by simply saying,

"We've got to have an Act of Toleration,

"we can't have this continued fact

"that the State dictates what religion you must have".

The Act of Toleration was brought in almost immediately

and granted freedom of worship to Nonconformists.

This document is absolutely vital to British history,

to the history of religion and, most of all, to the modern-day Briton.

We live in a country in which we are all free to worship the way we wish.

If it wasn't for this document then, simply, Nebo Chapel wouldn't exit.

For me, I mean, this is the starting point,

the beginning of a new dawn for Britain.

You know, the old days of persecution, of religious,

you know, tyranny, essentially, are over.

Alan and Hayley have got just £20,000

to do the first stage of restoration to Nebo Chapel.

They are doing most of the work themselves,

and with funds dwindling fast,

they've got another potentially expensive problem.

A large section of cornicing is missing, so Alan and Hayley

want to make a mould and produce their own plasterwork,

to repair the ceiling.

Give it a couple of years, all this cornicing would have been lost,

so we were lucky that we caught it at the right time

to be able to take a moulding.

So, I mean, it might cost us...

I don't know, total process to make all the cornicing, maybe 200 quid.

We was getting quotes in for sort of £200, £250, per linear metre,

so if we can make all of the cornicing,

which is a good 12 metres, we've saved a lot of money then.

To make a mould, Hayley paints a section of the cornicing with latex.

A total of 25 coats will be needed.

This bit's the fun bit, sort of after all the hard graft,

and I like crafty stuff as well, so this is good fun for me.

Hopefully I'll do it right,

hopefully it'll work and save us a small fortune.

Two down, 23 to go!

We continue our quest to find out where Nebo fits in

to the story of Welsh chapels.

We know the Act of Toleration

changed the lives of Nonconformists,

allowing them to worship freely.

Kieran is visiting a chapel that shows how the Act

affected communities in Wales during the 1690s.

So, we've come to a fairly lonely, remote hillside in Mid Wales

to see Maesyronnen Chapel, which is the earliest example

of an independent chapel in Wales following the Act of Toleration.

This remote location here really tells you something

about the origins of these kinds of congregations

and, therefore, explains the buildings,

because these were groups of farm workers,

sometimes in remote communities, coming together,

sometimes in secret, at least initially in secret, to worship.

Now, of course, it's no coincidence, then, that when they take on

a kind of architectural home, it looks like a farm building.

Oh, it's just absolutely beautiful in here.

I think the first striking thing here

is that sense of it not being like a theatre auditorium.

The seating layout is quite different to most churches.

The furniture here is disposed in a way

where you look at each other across the room and, in a way,

you're not really focused on any one part of the building.

Well, the chapel here has been beautifully restored

but, in a way, that can mask some of the truth

of what it would have been like in the 17th century and 18th century

to worship here.

This piece of furniture tells some of that story

because it's designed to shield you from the wicked draughts

that would have been whistling through this barn-like building.

And you have to also imagine this building with a rammed earth floor.

You know, the flagstones are from the 19th century that we see today.

It would have been freezing cold.

You know, this was not an easy place to come and worship.

Well, I'm now standing in the pulpit where generations of preachers,

300 years or more, have been preaching.

Now, the window over my left shoulder here has two purposes.

One, of course - helps me to read the Bible, it allows light in.

But it's wrong to see it as just a pragmatic thing.

It also, of course, dramatically back-lights the preacher.

And particularly if you're on this side of the chapel,

if you enter the chapel and I'm stood here,

you see this kind of halo-like light behind my head.

And I think that's a really important

and deliberate architectural effect.

I can see from here the faces of every person in the congregation.

There's a sense of this being a commanding position, of course,

but also, it's one that is kind of equal for everybody.

It's been great coming here today, because we've seen

the kind of origins of a whole school of thought

that leads to a wide variety of chapel building

happening all over Wales.

It shows the architectural expression

founded on our ideas of equality amongst the congregation

and, you know, all of those things are still present, I think, in Nebo

and in other chapels, but this is the kind of wellspring of all of that.

Kieran's next task will be to trace the journey of worshipping,

from barns like Maesyronnen to buildings like Nebo.

Hayley and Alan have spent the last nine months

working tirelessly at the chapel,

but things have taken a turn for the worse.

Thieves have broken in.

This is where they got in, yeah.

When I arrived, the Perspex sheeting was bent up,

the window was wedged open.

Smashed the glass and the frame got chewed up a little bit.

We're as secure as we can be for the budget that we've got.

You could spend, you know, ten grand, easy, securing the premises,

but in my eyes, it does one of two things.

We haven't got that money to spend,

but it also sends a beacon out to people, "Oh, actually, yeah,

"we've got loads in there", when we haven't got...

Well, now we've got nothing in there, so...

The vital collection of power tools they rely on to restore Nebo

has been stolen.

We're doing this on a shoestring budget.

We've got next to no money, so those tools that have been taken,

those power tools, they're not top-of-the-range tools,

they're tools that we've just about been able to afford

in order to do things within the chapel and to progress that on.

Having a negative experience like a burglary

can change your perspective on what are we doing it for, you know,

what's the benefits

if it's two steps forward and two steps back?

You can fall out of love with a project the more it lingers on,

and the chapel's been in our life for 18 months.

You haven't got the heating on, you haven't got the plumbing in.

The list of things yet to do is a lot longer

than the list of things that we've achieved.

Wales was key to fuelling the Industrial Revolution of Britain

in the 19th century.

People flooded into the valleys of South Wales to find work,

creating new communities in the process.

As new pits were dug, new chapels were built

and Nonconformist worship became increasingly popular.

Kate's come to Blaenavon and has headed 90 metres underground.

In the early 19th century,

Wales was becoming a hotbed of nonconformity.

You know, underneath, there were the mines,

this hard, difficult, dangerous work, which seemed without salvation,

and yet at the same time, the chapels were strengthening

and I really think the two were linked.

Essentially, chapels like Nebo gave people hope.

Whole families would work in the mine - the father might be here,

the mother may be next to him,

the children, the grandparents, all his brothers.

Basically, when you were born into a mining family,

you knew that was your destiny.

Life was really hard for the workers in the Industrial Revolution,

particularly for the children.

Children working in the mine could be as young as six,

and they were expected to work 12 hours a day.

It was difficult, it was dangerous,

and it was often terrifying work for a child.

Chapels became the social heart of these new communities,

the effect of which is still seen today.

Kate now needs to understand what role Nebo had to play

in the village of Hirwaun.

Restoring Nebo is an enormous challenge for Alan and Hayley.

I've come to see how they're getting on

and how they're coping since the burglary.

Well, 80% of the tools, power tools, were stolen.

Yeah, they took all the big power tools,

which was a bit of a knock, wasn't it?

What are you going to do, Alan?

Because you've got absolutely no money.

Well, we'll find a way. We just have to reallocate money.

I mean, where we sort of budgeted

to hire a nail gun for a weekend, which is £45,

we won't hire a nail gun for a weekend,

so that's two weekends on the trot - that's £90 we've saved.

But have you managed to move on from that?

Yeah, I think we have. I think...

It's still raw, it's still quite early on,

but...a project like this, you can't let it get you down.

You have to remain positive, you have to look forward,

and it's almost sticking two fingers up to them.

It doesn't matter what you've done to us, we're going to finish this.

This is going to be our family home.

They only have £8,000 left to finish the build

and the vestry still resembles a building site.

They're a long way from getting Nebo up to scratch

for the mortgage valuation by the bank.

-That's going to be a bedroom?

-That's a bedroom.

-What's this one?

This will be a doorway into the bathroom, family bathroom.

-Family bathroom.

-Underneath the sort of flat section ceiling

will be a free-standing bath with a shower over.

It all sounds really lovely, Alan,

but it all seems to be a really long way away.

-It looks like it is, but it's...

-Yeah, because it is.

Yeah, it is, yeah! There is a lot of work to do, but we'll get there.

Alan and Hayley are determined to finish this project

and with money tight,

their parents are frequent visitors to lend a hand.

You're hands-on parents, aren't you?

Yeah. You've got to do what you've got to do for your kids.

I'm supportive of Alan and, you know, believe in his dream,

although I am a little concerned at various aspects of it.

What could possibly be concerning you, Brian?!

The size of the project. I think the project was way too ambitious to start.

-Do you?

-Yeah, I do.

And I don't think the balance that they've got left

is enough to get them to where they want to be.

-What, the eight grand?

-Yeah, I don't think there's enough money there. That's my opinion.

Alan's parents are clearly worried about the future of this project,

but does Hayley share their concerns?

At what point would you step back from the project?

I don't think we'd ever quit.

I think if you take on something like this

and you feel as passionately about it as me and Al do,

I think you know that you will never quit.

There must be nights when you go to bed and just weep with exhaustion.

Yeah, I do get tired sometimes.

It does start off as a fairy tale, doesn't it?

But I think the reality of doing it does take its toll.

And although it is a labour of love,

-because we do love the property, it's hard work.

-Yeah.

It's really hard work.

As communities were brought together by the mining industry,

its workers and families flocked through the doors

of Nonconformist chapels.

Kate's come to Glamorgan Archives to trace this story at Nebo Chapel.

At the centre of this boom were the Crawshay family.

But they were actually a Yorkshire family

and they invested a lot of money in the mine,

machinery, made it much bigger, and people came from all over Wales,

all over Britain, to work in the mine.

To the Crawshay family, Nebo Chapel was somewhere for the workers.

They gave money to it because they wanted the workers to go to chapel.

But it really wasn't somewhere for them.

But what happened was, there was a big change.

Henry, the son of William, the first son,

he was the ironmaster in charge of the ironworks,

and he fell absolutely in love with a local girl,

Eliza Harris, who worked at the ironworks.

And he fell passionately in love with her.

So much so that when she got pregnant, the family said,

"Disown her, pay her off, get rid of her".

And he said, "No, I want to marry her".

Henry and Eliza became Nonconformists,

and in 1834, their twin daughters were christened at Nebo Chapel.

So, that's an incredible link there.

This place that began in such humble circumstances

is now at the christening of this millionaire family.

They were really part of the community,

and Nebo was so vital to this.

William, the great patriarch,

was so annoyed by the love of Henry for Eliza,

he pushed him out of managing the mine

and brought in his other son, Francis.

And he was a man who was really devoted to the area.

He learnt Welsh, he was interested in the workers.

He spoke to them in their language,

and also was very concerned about religion,

and he gave a lot of money to Nebo Chapel as well.

So, Francis is one of our really important figures,

not only in the community, in the area,

but also in the history of Nebo.

Nebo Chapel was rebuilt in the style we see today

thanks to money from the Crawshay family in 1851.

But by this date, Nonconformist architecture in Wales

had made a massive leap from its humble beginnings.

Up to this point,

Nonconformist communities had fairly modest lodgings,

partly a hangover from when they had to worship in secret,

and also because they were making these things from the ground up

with the local labour force and the materials available to hand.

At the beginning of the 19th century, everything begins to change.

There was an explosion of chapel-building in Wales

and by the mid-1850s, there were enough seats

to accommodate 75% of the population.

What were the publications and documents

that the architects in Wales were looking at

that were influencing them

and helping them to find these new architectural languages?

Kieran's headed to London.

He's at the Royal Institute of British Architects library,

reading the important journals and books of the day...

starting with The Builder, a magazine launched in 1843.

I think this kind of literature

is one of the critical architectural debates of the day

that would have influenced people

building these ecclesiastical buildings.

These are buildings for worship, after all,

and they needed an appropriate style.

They would have been reading about it here.

Following its introduction by Inigo Jones in the 17th century,

classical architecture grew in popularity

throughout the Georgian period and into the 19th century.

Publications like The Antiquities Of Athens,

together with The Builder,

were a font of knowledge on the classical style,

focusing on symmetry and proportion.

This is just an absolutely exquisite book,

and it's also so evocative of a time when, you know,

travel was becoming easier, these men were going to the Parthenon,

drawing it with incredible precision and beauty,

and then bringing it back as a kind of manual

of how to do things in Victorian England.

Now, what we see is this fans out across the country

through these journals and books is, of course,

people taking the bits that they can afford to reproduce,

and that's how we see this kind of variation

in the chapels of Nonconformism in Wales.

We see different levels of resolution.

I think Nebo has enough to suggest that they're aware of this stuff,

but probably not enough money to reproduce the great porticos

and tablatures of Greek temples.

Classical architecture was the chosen style for Nonconformist chapels,

but when did the architecture that inspired Nebo first arrive in Wales?

Work is progressing at the chapel.

The roof timbers have been replaced, and now Alan and Hayley

need to make a start on removing the pews.

We're going to try and take the pews out carefully

so that we can hopefully put them back together

in order to sell them on,

because, obviously, the money then from the pews

will be put towards, hopefully, a boiler, so...

If we can get enough money.

Fortunately, they've got help, as Hayley's sister, Laura,

and her boyfriend, Emmett, are visiting.

-It's going to be...

-Huge.

-..nice to get a real sense of space.

-It's quite an exciting day, really.

-It is exciting, yeah.

It's exciting when you start taking them out.

They define the chapel as what it is and we're ripping it out

and changing its use, so yeah, it is sad to see them go.

It's not completely lost, is it?

No, no, they'll appear in someone's home, can be enjoyed.

And cherished, yeah.

While Alan finishes taking out the pews,

Hayley's continuing with the ceiling.

She's taking a mould of the existing cornicing

so it can be replicated and used to repair the plasterwork.

It's time to remove the mould.

If this doesn't work, Hayley will have wasted hours of her time

and another piece of precious cornicing could be lost.

It's taken sort of weeks and weeks to do it,

so it'll sort of make or break today.

Is it going to work or not? So, fingers crossed it'll be fine!

This is a delicate operation.

Emmett's a prop-maker and makes moulds for a living, so can advise.

Emmett's given me some really good advice

about putting even pressure on it

and sort of doing it gradually and taking your time.

I don't want to break it!

Really conscious that I'm going to fall backwards off the ladder!

It's just taking all the paint off.

Oh!

I was scared to put up a lock, unfortunately.

Oh, sugar!

We'll fix that. That's fine.

We've got a mould to fix it now, so...

It's quite dry, so we're just going to... It's worked, hasn't it?

It's just...

If it's come out like that, perhaps they needed replacing anyway.

And now we've got the mould, we can do that.

There's always a risk you're going to damage

the section of cornicing that you've taken the mould from.

If it had ripped it off and ripped the mould

and we'd have lost the section of cornicing and lost the mould,

it would have been all for nothing,

but we've got a mould, we can fix what's broken.

Yes, she's done a really good job.

For her first mould, latex and fibreglass mould, it's brilliant.

So, it's been a successful weekend at Nebo.

It feels like you're ticking a lot off your list.

-One of the positive ones, really.

-Yeah, definitely.

Kieran has come to the first Nonconformist chapel

to be built in the classical style in Wales.

It's one of the country's most important,

but also tragically forgotten chapels.

Well, it's a magnificent building.

It's a bit tired, it's a bit half derelict-looking for now,

but it's almost like discovering a Roman ruin in the Welsh countryside.

Peniel Chapel in Tremadog was constructed in 1810

and has clear references to Inigo Jones' St Paul's Church

and none of the vernacular traditions of Nonconformism.

It would directly influence every one

of the thousands of classical chapels that would follow.

This building really does introduce the classical revival into Wales.

It's a kind of herald. There are still, of course,

lots of chapels being built in a much more modest style at this period,

but this is a building that really signals the future.

The most striking thing about this building

is this astonishing portico that just looms in front of you

as you approach the chapel.

And this is like nothing else we've ever seen so far

in chapel-building in Wales.

It's highly architectural, highly designed,

and designed to kind of impose a set of civic values.

It's like a monument all of a sudden.

This is no mere meeting house.

Once you get behind the portico, there's an interesting effect,

because the building behind it is quite domestic.

It has these square sash windows, not particularly grand,

on two storeys, as if there's a two-storey house

behind this amazing Tuscan portico.

So, it's a strange effect, there's almost two faces to this building,

and I think that shows that there's an architecture in transition here.

Well, this building is built in 1810 and designed then

and, of course, that makes it earlier than Nebo.

Nebo's clearly kind of learnt from this building and from others,

but I think what we're seeing here is kind of the blueprint.

You know, this symmetrical arrangement with two aisles,

two doors in the front, two doors behind the pulpit -

all of that is so similar to Nebo

that this feels like the kind of original.

What strikes me here is that this is a little bit plainer.

Nebo, the joinery is very, very beautiful.

And it's more about this rake - again, like Nebo -

giving people the view that they need of the action.

Kieran's managed to trace how the change in fortunes

of the congregation in the 19th century

directly influenced architecture.

All this timber panelling and beautifully lit from sash windows,

but I think that's the crucial change that we've gone through -

from a hidden away, rather rootsy,

bottom-up type congregational arrangement,

to one that, you know,

you could happily bring your family to in their Sunday best.

We've really uncovered a story here that's vital to Wales,

and also to history of Christianity in the UK.

By coming here today, we're uncovering a trajectory

that Nebo is a very big part of.

Funded by the Crawshay family

and inspired by the architecture of Peniel Chapel,

Nebo Chapel was rebuilt in the classical style in 1851,

and Kate has now managed to discover

who would have been overseeing the work -

the Reverend William Williams.

I found an article which really underlines how William Williams

was the heart of the local area.

They really loved him.

It says here he won the hearts of the people, he was so popular.

So, Nebo Chapel, the rebuilt Nebo Chapel,

was really the kind of beating heart of the community.

William Williams was the first Reverend of Alan and Hayley's chapel

and evidence shows he also took a major role

in improving conditions for the whole community.

William Williams wanted Hirwaun to be a better place.

He wants to reform the local community.

He wants to improve the life of the people,

particularly the life of the children,

and what he wanted most of all was a proper school

where children could learn and get an education

and they could better themselves.

He's so determined to build the school,

he had a tea party to raise the money,

2,000 tickets, one shilling each,

and finally, the school was opened in 1849.

Now long gone, William Williams' school

was situated on the hill opposite Nebo Chapel

and he was very clear

about how the children who attended should be treated.

"The children are not to be punished.

"If naughty, the master must speak to the parents."

And this was a time when children were regularly beaten at school,

but not at the Nebo school.

Not at the school that William Williams had set up.

Nebo Chapel was the embodiment of the efforts of William Williams

and others to make the life of local people better,

not just use them for industrial fodder.

Back at Nebo

and Alan and Hayley are continuing work on the pews.

Although the ones they've removed are perfect for a grand building

like Nebo, they're too big for most homes,

but Alan has had a great idea.

The plan is just to cut the seat down,

the backs down, and then stick the two ends on the seat at the back

and it's just reduced down to about a metre long.

That length there we'll use to sell a pew,

but that length there is a stair tread, so it's...

You know, we've made £100 on this piece,

we've saved on this piece, and it ties in

because the wood's all the same, it's part of the history.

Be able to walk up the flight of stairs saying,

"That used to be a pew, that did".

This is the second one we're putting together,

and we're looking to make 20.

Only another 18 to go.

Assembling pews might sound like one of the more straightforward jobs

in this chapel...

Ready... Three, two, one...

..but it seems that is not the case.

-Oh!

-Oh!

HAYLEY LAUGHS

At least we have a laugh, eh?

Work in the vestry is progressing well - the walls are up

and the studwork is going in.

I feel really excited to see it all going up, and proud and motivated.

It feels like it's been a long time coming to get us to this stage,

and I would like to have been here a lot sooner,

but won't be too long before we're concealing all this hard work.

The studwork really does change everything quickly.

You start to get a sense of the rooms and, you know,

you've got a ground floor and a first floor.

And you get... You've got...

Now you can see the bathroom area, the en suite, the bedrooms, yeah.

It does start to come together.

It's a completely different stage.

When you're digging the trenches, you're hacking plaster off the walls and you're stripping it back,

it feels like you're going backwards in the project.

It doesn't feel like you're making any sort of steps forward.

But when you start building it up and sort of seeing the rooms take shape, it's really exciting

because you want to see the next step come, so it's really good.

Hayley's dad, a builder, is on site today.

He's making openings in the vestry roof for skylights.

As the light streams in, their dream feels one step closer.

-It's amazing.

-It's really good. What a difference.

-Starting to feel like a home now.

-You got it?

The first skylight is about to go in.

That's it.

-Hooray!

-Hooray!

-We've got a window!

-That's good, innit?

Looks really good, doesn't it? That is brilliant, isn't it?

That's awesome, that is.

-Ah, thanks, Dad!

-Thank you very much, Frank.

Two more tomorrow!

Before we discover whether Alan and Hayley

managed to complete their restoration on a shoestring,

they're going to find out all that we have

about Nebo's role in Welsh history.

This is the Act of Toleration.

Without a document like this

saying Protestant sects could worship as they pleased,

Nebo Chapel would never have been possible.

What's really important about the 17th century and architecture

is the arrival of classical architecture.

We discovered Peniel Chapel in Tremadog,

and this is the kind of start of your chapel.

These distinctive arched windows or that distinctive gable.

-Very similar, isn't it?

-Exactly, yeah.

The Crawshay family was so vital in creating Nebo

because they wanted to foster and improve the lives of the people around them,

and this is the Reverend William Williams,

who wanted to create this focus for the community, because it just didn't have it.

I wasn't aware of it being such a beacon for the local community.

And it's such a beautiful building,

and sort of now you've told us the history about it,

it sort of adds to the passion that,

you know, that we feel about the building

and sort of restoring it and putting it back to what it was.

When Hayley and Alan bought this Welsh chapel in 2011,

it seemed beyond redemption.

I've come to see if they've done enough work to secure a mortgage,

in order to complete the restoration.

-Lovely to see you.

-You too.

They took on a building that was derelict - the roof leaked,

the timbers were rotten and the vestry was just an empty shell.

Alan and Hayley had just £20,000 to make the chapel habitable.

Foundations were dug, walls built, floors constructed.

What makes this restoration incredible

is that they've done almost all the work themselves.

With money and time being so tight,

they haven't completed the vestry yet, but it's well on the way

to being the family home they've always dreamed of.

Well, this has improved. This has got a floor.

-This room's going to be the master bedroom.

-Our room.

-Yeah.

-There'll be another staircase sort of winding up

to get to the en suite upstairs.

-Well, it's not a finished room, is it?

-No.

Because it's just me and Al doing it, it just takes a long time.

All the internal studs have been done and the floorboards have gone back in.

-And all the insulation underneath the floorboards.

-Yeah.

-Lot of work.

-Yeah.

So, actually, there is a lot of work that's happened

since I was last here, but a lot of it's invisible?

-Yeah. That's the problem.

-Have you done it all yourselves?

-Everything. Literally everything.

-Yeah, yeah, we've not had any trades on at all yet.

-No.

-This is REALLY different! It's bright, isn't it?

-It is, yeah.

Your skylights, oh, they're lovely. And the staircase.

Hooray, you've got a staircase! That's really exciting.

I recognise this. These aren't treads, these are pews!

-They are.

-Brilliant, you've used them.

-Yeah, we made a staircase, didn't we?

-And they look great.

So, what would that cost you if you were going to go and buy that?

With it being pitch pine, it was about £700, £800.

-SHE GASPS

-So, this has cost you...?

-This staircase cost us about £40.

-If that.

If that, yeah. But we had to.

We couldn't have afforded to buy a staircase to put in.

I'm so impressed with that. I think it's utterly brilliant.

-Hayley, have you run out of money?

-Pretty much, yeah.

Just got to work a bit harder, bring a bit more cash in, and...

And as we've been selling the pews as well,

we've been getting little bits of money from that,

which sort of all adds up, doesn't it?

-We sold about...ten?

-Mm.

-Well done.

-Yeah.

-Hayley's done really well in selling them.

When you think that, you know, ten is £1,000.

-Yeah, yeah, that's great.

-That's, you know, a good chunk.

Up the lovely stairs. It's so exciting.

You've built yourself a second storey.

You've got a whole other floor. It's fantastic.

-This is a good size, isn't it?

-This is, yeah.

-And, this is what, your...?

-A guest room.

-Nice, big guest room.

-Yeah.

So, what's going to be through there?

-That's a walk-in wardrobe.

-And at the other end...

Is the en suite.

You've created a really luxurious home

out of what was just a kind of big, empty space.

Not many people can say, "Oh, we've got...

"Our first home was a four double-bed,

"three en suites and a family bathroom".

And when the chapel's done,

it's going to be an absolute huge living space in there.

So, I think we are extremely lucky, but I think it's deserved,

to a certain extent, for the effort and hard work we've put into it.

I want to get the opinion of Alan's son.

Hello, Lewis?

-Hello!

-Hello!

-What you doing in there?

-Hiding!

What did you think when he first said to you, "Look, Lewis,

"look at this chapel - I'm going to turn it into a house"?

I was like, "Oh, you're not going to do that in a year"!

-What do you think now?

-But somehow he's managed to do it.

-Quite incredible, isn't he?

-Yeah.

-You proud of him?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Even Alan's son thought his dad and Hayley had taken on too much with Nebo,

a massive project with huge financial risk.

You started this project with £20,000. How much money is left?

There's about £200 left in the kitty.

There is money allocated elsewhere for the plasterboard and stuff,

but once we're in here, we'll be saving sort of £1,000 a month,

so we'll be able to use that money to buy the skirtings and the doors

and finish off when we're living here.

Are you proud of what you've achieved here so far?

We couldn't have physically given any more than what we have

sort of physically and emotionally,

and to sort of come out with where we are,

with what we had to spend at the start,

I think you can't be anything but pleased and proud of what you've done.

-I'm proud of Hayley as well, so yeah.

-You should be.

-Yeah.

You should be incredibly proud,

-because you're an extraordinary couple.

-Thank you.

With only £200 left in the kitty,

Alan and Hayley will have to start saving again to complete the vestry.

They bought Nebo Chapel for £25,000

and the plan was to do up the vestry and then remortgage it

in order to raise the money to pay for the restoration of the chapel.

We've brought in surveyor Martin Challenger

to see if the work they're doing

will increase the property's value sufficiently.

They need it to be worth at least £80,000

in order to finish the whole project.

Once they've finished the back of the building there

can you give a rough idea of what it might be worth once it's finished?

On completion of all the works to the vestry,

you'd be looking in the region of £115,000.

-I'm really pleased, yeah.

-That's great! It's really good!

Really, really good.

It's almost a reward for the effort that we've put in.

We're on the right track. It's just getting there, yeah.

Having bought Nebo for £25,000,

when the vestry is finished, it'll be worth 115,000,

so Alan and Hayley will be able to raise funds

to save the rest and turn it into a family home,

which was always their goal.

When this entire property is finished

to your very high standards,

do you have any idea what it might be worth?

We thought about around the £200,000 mark, haven't we?

-There or thereabouts.

-Martin, have you got any idea?

My proposed valuation with the property complete,

externally and internally, you'd be looking in the region of £265,000.

Martin and I are chuffed! I don't know how you're feeling!

Yeah, well, I feel pretty good too, yeah.

Oh, that's great. Good news, well done.

Given those sums of money, do you think the chapel was worth saving?

I think it was absolutely worth saving.

I think everything we've put into it, this has just confirmed for us

that it was absolutely worth it, and it's great.

It's an important building to the community

and the history of the local area, and to be a part of that

and retain it for the future is quite special, really.

Alan and Hayley fell in love with this Nonconformist chapel,

but their dream to save it is just as unconventional

as the people who created it.

They bought this place for just £25,000

and had even less to save it.

But then they're not your typical restoration heroes.

Very few people would risk so much with so little.

But they did have one thing.

Faith - in their dream and in each other.

They've still got a long way to go on this building,

but it's starting to pay off,

and not as a cynical development opportunity

but as a wonderful family home

and, one day, that's exactly what Nebo Chapel will be.

On the next Restoration Home...

we step inside one of the biggest challenges yet.

There are 112 rooms. Read it and weep!

A Scottish castle with hidden surprises...

Wow!

-So, there is a doorway, isn't there?

-There is a doorway, yes.

..and a link to one of the greatest murder mysteries of all time.

It certainly seems like he's in the thick

of what is the biggest whodunnit in Scottish history.

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