Sale And Brooklands Cemetery Chapel

This is a mid-1860s cemetery chapel complex, built by Robert McBeath of Sale, the architect, and Luke Winstanley of Sale, the builder, for the Sale Burial Board. The building is constructed of coursed thin sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings, coped gables featuring cross finials, and a Welsh slate roof laid in decorative bands.

The plan is an H-shape, with a tower and spire rising from a central pointed archway, and tall gabled crosswings with lower ranges linking to outer entrance porches. The symmetrical front features a two-stage square tower with stepped buttresses rising above a central pointed arch. The tower supports a slender octagonal spire with lucarnes and a finial. Single-story ranges extend from either side, connecting to taller three-bay chapel crosswings with steep coped gables, low-angle buttresses, and wide gable with pointed-arched four-light windows now boarded over, with traceried heads below hood moulds with carved head stops. Above is a full-width pitched moulding, seemingly to weather the lower attached range, with a blind trefoil within the apex. Pointed lancets are present to the side walls. Lower gabled porches are on the outer walls of the chapels, with entrances beneath pointed-arched openings. The inner doorways have double vertically-boarded doors with elaborate strap hinges. The rear has lower single-bay projections, each with an oculus, now boarded over. The interior has not been inspected.

The cemetery's origins lie in the mid-19th century response to overcrowded and unsanitary urban church cemeteries, leading to the creation of burial boards responsible for new cemetery provision. This chapel complex represents an early example of such a development, demonstrating a Decorated Gothic Revival style integrated into a planned burial ground landscape. The chapel is considered one of the earliest developments following the establishment of Burial Boards in urban areas where churchyards were considered unsuitable for burials. The building has seen few alterations since its construction.