A photographic exhibition exploring the fate of Welsh
chapels and what this tells us about today’s Wales.

Each village and town in Wales has at least
one chapel, and usually several. Once central
to community life, many have now been
converted to other uses, fallen into disrepair or
been demolished. Despite their decline, they
remain iconic of the Wales that was, and when
transformed to new uses, reveal the very
different country that Wales has become.

This idea is examined in the photographs
taken by Philip Sky. Chapels become
nightclubs, galleries, shops, mosques,
museums and pubs. They illuminate the
diverse nature of today’s Wales.

Accompanying the photographs is an essay by
Roy Davies, Calvary is Closed: the Chapel
and Social Change in Twentieth Century
Wales. This explores the rise and fall of the
chapel, and reflects in a personal way on
chapel life and the transformation
of Wales.

These images and words use the Welsh chapel
as a way of viewing the social, economic and
cultural change that Wales has undergone in
the second half of the twentieth century