East Lodge And Gates To Mere Knolls Cemetery

East Lodge and gates to Mere Knolls Cemetery is a cemetery lodge and gateway built in 1856 by Thomas Oliver. The lodge and gateway are constructed from rock-faced stone, likely magnesian limestone from Marsden quarry, with ashlar dressings. The roof is made of Lakeland slates and features cast-iron cresting, while the gates are made of wrought iron. Designed in the Gothic style, the building is two stories tall with a one-window lodge and a one-storey, one-window wing set back to the left, which connects to a high vehicle entrance arch flanked by pedestrian arches.

The lodge on the left has a front gable with chamfered surrounds and mullions on a canted ground-floor bay window, along with paired first-floor lights that sit under a pointed relieving arch. The gable is supported by roll-moulded kneelers. There is a pointed arch window in the set-back left bay. The steeply pitched roof is adorned with fleur-de-lys cast-iron cresting. The triple gateway features flattened pointed arches for both pedestrians and vehicles, with relieving arches above wide-chamfered reveals and pierced trefoils.

On the right, a clasping buttress has a long sloped coping. Above the arches, there are three gables, with the central gable being higher and containing a corbelled bracket that supports a low-relief cross under a relieving arch. The gable coping is decorated with ball-flower stops. The outer gables have triple-moulded ridge finials, while the central gable features a cross-gable peak with cusped blind tracery and a stone cross finial.

The gates include round panels at dog-bar level with wrought palmette quatrefoil patterns, and high tendril finials on the hinged uprights that support scrolled bracing to the top rail. The intermediate rails have trefoil-headed panels and spike finials above the central rail. This structure is a fine example of local stone and iron-forging craftsmanship. At the time of the survey, the lodge was empty, and all doors and windows were blocked.