Cemetery Chapels

SOUTHPORT

SD31NW DUKE STREET 664-1/1/31 (North East side) Cemetery Chapels

GV II

Pair of cemetery chapels with linking cloisters and clock tower; the east chapel now a store. c1865, for Southport Improvement Commissioners. Coursed sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings, slate roofs with some polychrome fish-scaling. STYLE: High Victorian Gothic. PLAN: linear 7-unit plan on north-west/south-east axis, with a central tower linked by short cloisters to chapels at right-angles to the main axis, each of which has a parallel narthex or antechurch. EXTERIOR: a striking symmetrical composition, with a tall narrow tower in the centre, low arcaded cloisters and steeply-gabled chapels flanked by the lower gables of their narthexes. The tower, of 3 unequal stages, with buttresses dying into the second stage and a steeply-gabled saddle-back top, has a 2-centred open archway with stiff-leaf colonnettes and a steep gablet containing a coloured tile, a band of similar tiles, a tall 2-light louvred lancet to the second stage with multi-foil and trefoil in the head and a hoodmould, and a coped gable containing a clock-face and flanked by small set-back turrets (or chimneys). The cloisters have low arcaded windows of 3 2-centred arched lights, and roofs of green and purple fishscale slates. The chapels and their narthexes have short buttresses, and roofs carried down to a low level with stepped coping and apex crosses: the chapels have large 2-centred arched 4-light windows, each with a moulded sill band and a hoodmould but with differing tracery, and the narthexes have segmental-pointed archways with hoodmoulds opening into recessed porches with similar inner doorways. INTERIOR: not inspected. Forms group with Eliza Fernley Lifeboat monument (qv) and with former Roman Catholic chapel approx. 70m north (qv).

Listing NGR: SD3407115828