Llywarch Methodist Chapel, Wrexham

The Llywarch Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Chapel was a rural Nonconformist chapel serving a Welsh-speaking congregation in the Ceiriog Valley area near Wrexham, historically within Denbighshire. It formed part of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist tradition, a major religious movement in Wales that later became the Presbyterian Church of Wales.

The chapel was originally built in the 1870s, with sources indicating a significant rebuilding or alteration around 1891. Architecturally, it followed the typical style of many small Welsh rural chapels of the late Victorian period: a simple rectangular structure, gable-fronted, with understated decorative features. Such buildings were practical rather than ornate, reflecting the theological emphasis on preaching and community worship rather than elaborate ceremony.

Llywarch Chapel functioned not only as a place of worship but also as a focal point for local community life. Like many Calvinistic Methodist chapels, it would have hosted Sunday services, prayer meetings, Bible study gatherings, and Sunday school. The chapel primarily served Welsh-speaking farming families in the surrounding countryside. In the 1905 religious census for the parish of Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog, Llywarch was recorded as having 72 adherents, indicating a modest but active congregation at the beginning of the twentieth century.

During the later twentieth century, rural depopulation and declining chapel attendance across Wales led to the closure of many small chapels. Llywarch eventually ceased regular religious use and fell out of active service. While detailed records of its final years are limited online, its history reflects the broader rise and decline of Welsh Nonconformity in rural communities, where chapels once played a central spiritual and social role.