Cemetery chapels and porte-cochere

Cemetery chapels and porte-cochère, built 1874 to designs of G G Hoskins, with R Borrowdale as contractor. The building is Gothic in style.

The structure is constructed from tooled and snecked pink and yellow Horton Bank sandstone with Dunhouse ashlar dressings, and has Welsh slate roofs.

The plan comprises a symmetrical arrangement of a pair of cruciform chapels linked to a central porte-cochère. The chapels are oriented north to south and positioned within the northern part of the cemetery, where hearses and carriages entered from the north entrance on Thompson Street West.

The three-bay chapel elevations feature high pitched roofs with fish-scale slates, decorative ridge tiles and moulded eaves cornices. All window and door openings are topped with pointed arches with stopped hood moulds featuring floriated and animal representations, and have polychrome surrounds; the tracery is Decorated in style. The outer chapel elevations have kneelers and stone verges with triangular stone finials topped by round-lobed trefoil heads. Single windows alternate with stepped buttresses, and angled buttresses rise to the corners. Projecting, buttressed single-storey porches extend through the eaves with triangular and trefoil finials to the apex, each with eaves cornices and full-height entrances with moulded surrounds. The east porch has double wooden doors with ornate scrolled hinges; the west porch is boarded over. The chapel north and south gables contain a large central window with a circular opening with cruciform tracery to the apex. The inner chapel elevations are similar to the outer elevations but include an external eaves chimney with polygonal stacks, and the projecting porches link the chapels to the porte-cochère. A later wall has been constructed to the rear of the east chapel, forming an enclosed yard, which is understood to have been formerly roofed.

The porte-cochère features a multi-stage tower and spire rising to approximately 30 metres, with each stage separated by a moulded band. Tall, wide opposing carriage entrances with stepped angled buttresses bearing triangular finials rise to the second stage in the form of two-stage polygonal turrets with blind trefoil-headed arcading, surmounted by short hexagonal spires. These project upwards to the third stage of the tower, which has a battered base and lancets flanked by paired columns with crocketed, gabled canopies on alternate faces, rising through to the fourth stage. This uppermost stage is the most elaborate, with trefoil-headed openings within crocketed canopies terminating at an ornate trefoil-headed moulded cornice. Above sits a tall spire with ornate, columned lacunae on alternate faces and upper double moulded bands, surmounted by an iron cross finial.

The interior of the porte-cochère has a rib-vaulted ceiling with foliated bosses and side openings to each chapel. The original timber chapel roof structure with open-work remains in situ, carried on stone corbels. Geometric tiled floors are present, and window and door openings are plain, simple and unmoulded. The porches linking with the porte-cochère retain original openings with double boarded doors.

The north cemetery entrance comprises a pair of square ashlar gate piers with chamfered bases and shafts and large moulded pyramidal caps with octagonal domed finials. One of an original pair of ornate wrought-iron gates remains in situ.