The Old Chapel · Lion Street · Hay-on-Wye
We are a small school on purpose. Six chairs is the largest number of adults who can all speak enough in ninety minutes to be worth the fee.
Why here
Hay has more shelves than inhabitants, and a surprising number of them hold books nobody local can read: Spanish paperbacks in the castle honesty shop, French poetry in a crate outside, Italian cookery in the back room. People buy them anyway. We opened in 2019 for the readers who got tired of owning books they could only look at.
The chapel on Lion Street has two rooms and no carpet, which makes it loud and good for talking. Nothing is lectured from the front. There is no whiteboard full of grammar tables waiting for you when you arrive.
Who teaches you
That is not a slogan — it is the limit on what the school can offer. Four languages, because two people grew up with four between them.
Spanish · Italian
Born in Trieste to a Spanish mother and an Italian father, and bilingual before she could read either. Fourteen years teaching adults, the last six in Powys, and a weakness for crime novels she makes the B2 group read aloud.
Elena takes the Spanish ladder from scratch to conversation, both Italian groups, and the Wednesday evening that usually runs over.
French · Welsh
First language Welsh, raised between Talgarth and Rennes, and a technical translator for eleven years before she ever stood in front of a class. She still translates on Fridays, which is why there are no Friday lessons.
Rhiannon teaches all four French groups and both Welsh groups, and runs the Saturday café when Elena is away.
A Tuesday in week four
The shape is the same every week, so nobody arrives wondering what is about to happen to them.
Ten minutes of everyone answering the same small question — what you ate, where you went, what went wrong. English stops here.
One structure or one set of words, taken from something real: a train announcement, a recipe, a letter from a landlord.
You use it badly, then less badly. With six people you are speaking for roughly a third of the lesson instead of a twentieth.
Ten minutes of homework, not thirty — a page to read, a voice note to send, one phrase to use on somebody who is not in the class.
The rule of the room
It sounds frightening and it is, for about two weeks. Then it becomes the reason people stay: an hour and a quarter a week in which you cannot fall back, and must find another way to say the thing.
The Saturday café works on the same rule, which is why we hold it in a different room with better coffee and no homework. Come to it even if you are not enrolled.
About the Saturday caféYou are welcome to sit in on the first half of any evening group before you enrol — ask us, and we will tell you which night suits your level.
The Old Chapel, Lion Street, Hay-on-Wye HR3 5AD · +447700900215