Our Welsh Chapel Dream returns to Channel 4 on Tuesday 7th April, with Keith Brymer Jones and Marj Hogarth back for a third series.
Their journey to transform a crumbling 163-year-old chapel into a forever home, pottery studio and community space continues, with filming now wrapped.
Our Welsh Chapel Dream: what is it about?
Keith, best known for being a judge on Channel 4's The Great Pottery Throw Down and for his award-winning Word Range ceramics collection, and his wife Marj Hogarth, an actress and textile designer, purchased Capel Salem in Pwllheli on the Llŷn Peninsula in Gwynedd, northwest Wales, in September 2022 for £200,000.
The Grade II-listed building, previously owned by the Presbyterian Church of Wales, had been on the market for 12 years before the couple took it on.
'We've come such a long way. It's kind of hard to remember how dreadful it was,' Marj recalls.
'For at least a year, there was a lot of work going on you now can't see: underfloor heating, replacing the parquet floor, encapsulating the rooms with eco-friendly insulation,' adds Keith.
SERIES THREE: what to expect?
Keith and Marj began filming for the third series during summer 2025, and Keith has previously shared that the next phase of the project is focused on creating a working studio space within the chapel.
'The main focus after the living space is the studio hall,' Keith says, 'to get some production in there so I can earn the money to do the rest of the building. I visualise myself leaning against the archway of a door at the studio with a cup of tea and 300 pots I’ve just made behind me. That’s my next goal… to get to that point.'
The pottery studio will be a private working space, with a small team producing pieces primarily for online sale.
'Our apprentices will be there to make work to sell, but that will be mostly online. There'll be open days for people to come in and have a look around, though. And the multi-purpose community space will be open for exhibitions, folk evenings, farmers markets maybe,' he adds.
Keith also marked a major personal milestone during filming – celebrating his 60th birthday. The occasion, which doubled as a housewarming of sorts, was captured for the new series.
The large-scale celebration saw around 400 guests in attendance and, by Keith’s own admission, 'ran away with itself', with a number of emotional surprises planned throughout the event.
Read more: Keith Brymer Jones shares the next big step in his Welsh chapel renovation
SERIES TWO: the renovation
For series two, which aired in April 2025, we saw Keith and Marj convert the downstairs of the Sunday school into their living quarters.
Below, the couple talk through their costly house renovation – 'You do become really desensitised to the numbers… until the middle of the night,' laughs Marj – their bold design decisions, and making pottery for their new home.
Dry rot
Every renovation has its challenges, and one of this scale came with a pretty long list. The chapel's issue with dry rot was a huge setback for the couple. Keith said the scale of the issue was vast, with more than 30 skips of dry rot cleared.
‘We've lost stairwells, whole walls... it eats through anything apart from steel and stone... even concrete,' he says. ‘It’s been a real cancer to the building and we're not completely victorious yet. There's still quite a bit in the big hall, but we've been able to get it out of our living space and we're sort of in control now.
'When the series opens, we're trying to rip out the fungus. The Sunday school's original staircase has gone completely. At the moment, we have a massive void about 60ft high and we've just installed a light feature – light fittings from the main hall we've been able to repurpose. You needed to be in the circus to go up there, I'll tell you. We’re getting a galvanised staircase that won't rot. It will look stunning.'
The red kitchen
Colour-drenched in red, Keith and Marj's kitchen features cream units and a bespoke sink. 'I'd always wanted to have an English Rose kitchen – they were manufactured in the 1950s by people that used to make aeroplanes and it's basically aluminium,' says Marj. 'We found a woman who has a business that restores them. Our kitchen walls are red, the ceiling is red, the windows… everything. Rhodri [the architect] thought it was going to look like some crazy murder scene, but he quite likes it now.'
Celebrating more space
Marj revealed that when the couple started to work with Rhodri, he thought their living room should be the room that is now their black bathroom. While it's a cosy, snug and private space, they didn't take his advice. 'We'd lived in a rented flat in Margate, which we absolutely loved, but it was tiny. Our entire flat was probably the size of this room. In fact, slightly smaller. We said: "No, we want space and we want to be able to celebrate that space."'
The brutalist feature wall (and a helping hand from Richard Miller)
A focal point in their new home is a brutalist feature wall featuring 77 huge clay tiles made by Keith. 'It was a really psychologically therapeutic thing to do,' he reveals. 'And if truth be told, it's one of the only times I've ever done that – made something for a living space we're going to occupy. It's wonderful. I'm looking at them now across the room. They'll be here forever. I love them.'
The inspiration came from a visit to the Isle of Bute, where Marj's late parents lived. 'There's a terrific mid-century building on the side of a hill – Rothesay Academy, the old comprehensive – which had these wonderful architectural tiles on the wall,' Keith explains. 'Rhodri then informed us we'd lost a whole wall to dry rot and they were going to have to rebuild it with breeze blocks. We could either render and plaster it or do something with it, so I took it upon myself to make these tiles. It's worked out really, really well. It's a real nod to brutalist architecture.
'It's volcanic clay that fires really black and is really grainy. The texture really works – especially when the light falls across it. Most of the tiles were made in between filming the Throw Down at Gladstone Pottery because it was the only time I had. [Fellow judge] Rich Miller gave me a hand.'
Old vs new
It's more of the old and less of the new in Keith and Marj's new home. 'We don't want brand new pristine stuff because it would look a bit odd,' says Keith. 'We've got these wonderful pillars we've sandblasted and they look old. They’re sort of rusting up now, they're oxidising, which is lovely.'
The couple also installed 7,500 blocks of parquet flooring for that lived-in look. 'What’s amazing about Broadleaf Timber is the wood they use is all sustainable. It's bought in France and then seasoned for 10 years. Then, they start cutting it up into parquet,' explains Keith. 'They put the parquet in a big tumble dryer and mushed it about a bit. Now, all the edges have softened and there's little dents in it and, when you see the light coming through the windows, it's amazing. We know it's brand new, yet it looks like it's been there since the chapel was built.'
The heirloom cast iron plant
Keith's grandparents had been tenant farmers in Henley-on-Thames and when they retired and gave up the farm, they moved to a house, where his grandfather's brother, Harry, lived with them. 'He had his own parlour, kitchen and bedroom. We were always taken into his parlour when we arrived to say hello and when we left to say goodbye. It was like going into another world,' Keith recalls. 'His room was dark and velvety and smelt of dust and old books and tobacco and it was like nowhere I had ever been before. I absolutely loved it.'
Keith has part of the aspidistra (cast iron plant) that sat on Harry's walnut table, which has found a new home in the bathroom. 'There's been cuttings and cuttings and cuttings – everyone's got a bit – and that's my bit. I just wanted that sense of Victoriana. And why wouldn't you have that in your bathroom?'
Gigantic candlesticks
A visit to Coventry Cathedral, described by Keith as 'a real snapshot of 1950s design', featured eight-foot-high candlesticks by German-born ceramic artist Hans Coper, which inspired Keith to make his own. 'They're amazing in this very textural clay. I thought I'd do something like that. Hence the candlestick in the bathroom. I need to make two others to go with it, but it works really well,' he explains.
The candlestick is the last thing Keith threw at his old studio in Whitstable, Kent. 'It certainly didn't go unnoticed. I did really realise it was the last thing I was ever going to make in the studio,' he recalls.
The parlour-style black bathroom
Keith and Marj planned to make their bathroom look like a parlour. Painted black, it's bold and dramatic, with a green 1950s cast iron bath from a private house in Halifax, the aforementioned aspidistra plant and candlestick, and a refurbished lamp.
'We took an old standard lamp from Marj's parent's place and that's the lamp we have in the bathroom. She covered the shade, so this pretty standard-looking lamp now looks a million dollars,' says Keith.
The subtle pink bedroom
'The bedroom was the room I struggled with most,' admits Marj, 'but it’s really simple. It sounds hideous, but it's not. Everywhere is pink – a subtle powder pink, not a feminine girly pink. We've got beautiful new Crittall-esque windows.' There's also built-in wardrobes made with the backs of the pews. 'That soft pink works really well with our French Renaissance-style bed,' adds Keith.
But there's another notable bedroom feature. 'We've got our haberdashery counter in the bedroom – a really lovely, old, shop fitting in quite good condition. The size of the rooms means we can repurpose that kind of thing. Our lovely painter Ian totally and utterly fell in love with it,' says Marj.
SERIES ONE: the beginning
Season one of the Channel 4 property makeover series aired in May 2024, where viewers saw the couple take on the mammoth renovation (and pigeons), met the local community, and bought a 20ft shipping container as their new on-site bedroom.
• Watch Our Welsh Chapel Dream series three on Sunday 7th April at 8pm on Channel 4. Catch up on series one and two of Our Welsh Chapel Dream here.
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Word Range: The Great Pottery Throw Down's Keith Brymer Jones' ceramics collection
Keith Brymer Jones Word Range - Ceramic Snack Bowl Set of 4
Keith Brymer Jones Word Range - Ceramic Jam Pot
Keith Brymer Jones Word Range - Ceramic Large Bowl
Keith Brymer Jones Word Range - Ceramic Measuring Cup Set
Keith Brymer Jones Word Range - Ceramic Dog Bowl
