Chapel Of Ripley St Thomas School

A school chapel completed in 1888, designed by Paley and Austin. The building employs polygonal sandstone masonry with bands and dressings of ashlar, with exterior stone from Lancaster and interior stone from Stourton in Cheshire, roofed with Westmorland slate. The chapel is built in the Gothic Revival style.

The chapel comprises a nave and chancel under a continuous roof, a south aisle under a pitched roof with a transeptal vestry and organ chamber at its east end, and a north-west porch. The external walls are treated unusually, with bays separated by buttresses. Between these buttresses span double-chamfered segmental arches at a lower level, with blind walling below and pointed traceried windows above.

The south aisle comprises 3 bays with 3-light windows, followed by a 4th gabled transept bay to the east. This transept bay has a mullioned window of 3 pointed lights at the lower level and a traceried cross window above, with the lower part blind. The east wall of the transept and the south wall of the chancel are blind. The west window of the aisle is of one light, whilst to the west of the aisle the nave has a 2-light window. The east chancel window is of 6 lights, as is the west window of the nave.

On the north side, the east chancel bay is blind, and the 2nd bay has a 4-light window with reticulated tracery. Between the nave and chancel projects a stair turret with a doorway across its north-west angle, originally used to admit members of the public. The north wall of the nave contains windows of 2, 3, 3 and 3 lights. The north porch features a gable of shallow pitch, a moulded pointed outer doorway, and a similar inner doorway with a fleuron order.

To the west of the porch is an arcaded covered way of 3 bays which now links the chapel with a twentieth-century classroom block. At the junction between nave and chancel stands a tall octagonal fleche with weather vane and an open timber bell stage, which is decorated with carved oak tracery and incorporates a balcony. The original bell was said to have belonged to the peal of the Parish Church.

Interior

The 3-bay arcade to the south aisle has moulded pointed arches springing from piers, each comprising 6 clustered shafts with moulded capitals and bases. The chancel archway is continuously moulded in 3 orders with deep hollows. The windows have 2-centred rear-arches, and a wall passage runs at sill level along the north side of the nave and chancel and in the south wall of the aisle. In the east bays of the chancel, this passage is expressed as 3-bay arcades with trefoiled heads.

The north transept contains a vestry at the lower level, with an organ above within arched openings facing both aisle and chancel. The nave has an open timber roof featuring elaborate arch-braced trusses and false hammerbeam trusses. The chancel is roofed with a 2-bay quadripartite stone vault, the outer corners carried on concave octagonal shafts rising from floriated corbels.

The lower parts of the nave walls are lined with oak panelling with tracery decoration. Near the west end, the nave is divided by a solid oak screen with a central opening. The choir stalls comprise 6 bays on each side and feature elaborately carved and crocketed semi-octagonal canopies projecting forward from buttressed shafts under a flat top with lettered balustrade. The pulpit is of oak on a sandstone base, and the pews are of oak.

History

The chapel was originally built for Ripley Hospital, an orphanage, and was later converted for use by Ripley St Thomas School.