‘Two hands over two sands’: Capel Bethel, Dulyn: the Welsh chapel in Dublin

ABSTRACT No sense of inter-Celtic harmony underpinned the Wales-wide campaign to set up a Welsh Methodist chapel on Talbot Street, Dublin, in 1838. Rather, it was the Welsh community’s determination to take on the Church of Rome, and to ensure that the Welsh diaspora in Dublin – many of them seamen serving on vessels making the short crossing to Holyhead – would be ministered to in their native language. Bethel chapel proved to be remarkably successful, with its use of Welsh attracting the interest of members of the Gaelic League in the early twentieth century. Bethel chapel continued to be used by its Welsh congregation until 1939. The building survives as a cyber café, used by the Chinese community, and is on Dublin City Council’s record of protected structures.