North Chapel Of Sunderland Cemetery

The North Chapel of Sunderland Cemetery is a chapel located in Sunderland, built around 1858. It is constructed from snecked limestone rubble, featuring an ashlar plinth and dressings, and has a Welsh slate roof with stone gable copings and a wrought-iron finial. The chapel is oriented with the geographical north as its ritual east. It includes a nave with a sanctuary and transepts, a north vestry, a west porch, and a northwest tower.

Designed in the Decorated style, it showcases tracery and buttresses. The half-octagonal sanctuary has cusped lights beneath lion-masked eaves gutters leading to a pointed roof. The transepts feature three-light windows set on a sill string with ball-leaf stops. The west porch is flanked by diagonal stepped buttresses and has a double door within a pointed-arched moulded surround, set under a gable topped with a fleur-de-lys finial. A trefoil is positioned at the peak of the nave gable.

The square tower, which is slightly set back from the porch, has tall lancets with alternate block jambs and flower-stopped hoodmoulds above geometric tracery. The tower features gabled diagonal buttresses that step back to the gables, adorned with incised trefoils. It transitions to an octagonal plan and rises through a series of receding stepped copings to a high octagonal belfry stage, which includes high pointed-arched louvred openings beneath a head-stopped dripstring, topped with a tall stone spire. The roof is finished with fleur-de-lys finials on the overlapping stone gable coping, and there is a wrought-iron cross finial at the east end.