KAFFEINE IS THE NAME of an excellent little café in central London’s Eastcastle Street. We go there often, always passing that intrigues me, but which I had never entered until the last day of May 2026. Built in 1889 with a brick and stone façade that includes some columns with Corinthian capitals, it bears the name “Capel Bedyddwyr Cymreig”. Designed by the architect Owen Lewis, it is The Welsh Church of Central London, or in Welsh ‘Eglwys Gymraeg Canol Llundain’.

Inside the church, there is a vestibule with a mosaic floor. Within this space I noticed a Bible in Welsh lying within a glass case. A pair of doors leads into the main body of the church. This rectangular space has a centrally positioned set of organ pipes at one end, and beneath them, a pulpit (upon which the preacher was standing). A gallery with cast-iron balustrades and supported by slender pillars with Corinthian capitals. The ceiling curved gently upwards towards a centrally located set of windows that ran along the long axis of the church.

On the day we entered the church, there were no more than about 20 people in the congregation. Two services are conducted every Sunday, and occasionally the church hosts an organ recital.

I am pleased that after having passed this church many times and finding it closed, we were at last able to enter it. Also it was lovely hearing Welsh being spoken, even if I could not understand a word of it.

The church is used for Baptist services. When we entered it on a Sunday morning, a service was in progress. It was being led by a lady, who said things in Welsh, and then repeated what she had spoken in English. The proceedings were bilingual.

Although the church was fairly empty, the same could not be said of Kaffeine. Despite it being a Sunday morning in an area where most businesses were closed, this café was extremely busy, quite crowded.