Former Mortuary

Former Mortuary, Boston Cemetery

This small single-storey building was first built in 1855 and rebuilt in 1885. It was designed by James Piggott Pritchett Junior, a distinguished architect from Darlington who also designed the cemetery itself.

The mortuary is constructed of yellow and red brick on a stone-capped brick plinth, with stone dressings including stone surrounds to all openings. The rear (west) elevation uses different bricks to the other elevations, a result of the building being dismantled and rebuilt in 1885. The steeply sloping slate roof features stone coped gables on kneelers with a stone finial to the east gable. The southeast and northeast corners each have an angled buttress, and there are two further buttresses—one central and one at the western end—on both the north and south elevations.

The building has two arched door openings: one to the east gable and one to the south elevation. The east gable door is particularly fine, featuring a dripstone with vine and grape label stops. It is constructed double-thickness with vertical planks on the outside and horizontal planks on the inside, and has decorated strap hinges. The south elevation door is a modern replacement. Three arched window openings are present—two to the north elevation and one to the south—with a trefoil window opening in the upper part of each gable. The windows are currently boarded up with the glass removed.

Interior

The building is divided into two simple rooms, both with exposed roof timbers.

Historical Context

The Burial Board Act of 1854 authorised the setting up of burial boards outside London. In 1854, the newly formed Boston Burial Board agreed to create a cemetery on a twelve-acre site to the north of the town. The cemetery, designed by James Piggott Pritchett Junior and laid out by Baker and Son of Sleaford, opened for funerals in 1855. The original cemetery included an entrance lodge and office at its eastern end on Horncastle Road, and two chapels—one Anglican and one Nonconformist—located either side of a main avenue of lime trees. The mortuary, though originally located outside the cemetery to the west, was aligned with this main avenue. When the cemetery was extended to the west and south in 1885, the mortuary was dismantled and rebuilt further westwards, repositioned on the extended main avenue within the expanded cemetery boundaries. The cemetery underwent further extensions in 1928, 1940 and 1966. The Nonconformist Chapel was demolished in 1961. The mortuary is now used for storage.