Entrance Lodge at Louth Cemetery

Entrance Lodge at Louth Cemetery

A Gothic-style lodge serving as the principal entrance to a mid-19th-century cemetery in Louth, Lincolnshire, believed to have been completed in 1853 to the designs of Louth-born architect Pearson Bellamy.

The building is constructed of red brick with ashlar stone dressings and a slate roof. It is roughly L-shaped on plan, with a tall principal range aligned east to west that incorporates the entrance archway, side off-shuts, and an attached octagonal tower positioned to the south of the entrance arch. Attached retaining walls flank the archway on both front and rear elevations.

The lodge stands embedded in sloping ground with its principal entrance elevation addressing Upgate. The entrance façade features a tall stepped and pointed arch formed of moulded brick, which provides access to a short tunnel running beneath two floors of residential accommodation above. This tunnel gives access to the cemetery and was created as a cutting through rising ground, with the adjacent land restrained by tall retaining walls on either side of the front and rear archways. The arch retains original decorative wooden railed entrance gates. Above the arch is a two-light chamfered mullioned and transomed oriel window below a steeply-pitched roof. Above this are paired lancets with ashlar surrounds, and above them an inset panel with a blind quatrefoil bearing the inscription ERECTED 185-, the final numeral believed to be '3' but now missing. The date panel sits below a low dentilled parapet with moulded ashlar copings and a central gablet, which incorporates a stone panel with carved decoration depicting a rampant animal and rider set against a shield motif.

To the right of the archway is an octagonal stair tower incorporating a spiral stair. A ground floor doorway with an ashlar surround, shouldered lintel, and flanking lancet provides access to the stair and the two-storey dwelling above the archway. The tower has a single lancet to each storey level and a crenellated parapet set above a dentilled string course. To the left of the archway is a lower section of the front elevation forming the façade of a side off-shut, with a sloping section of ashlar-coped parapet and single lancets to each floor.

The rear elevation is more plainly detailed. The eastern arch to the tunnel beneath the lodge matches the entrance front design but now has timber supports, as the arch appears to be failing. Extending eastwards are tall sloping brick retaining walls which also buttress the arch. The tall east gable of the main range has lower off-shuts to either side: that to the south with an angled end wall, and that to the north set back from the main gable, with the roof pitches of the central range extended to cover both off-shuts. The gable has a canted oriel above the rear arch supported on a shallow bracket, with a single-light window above having a shallow arched head and a quoined surround.

A first-floor entrance doorway on the south side has a plain surround and a segmental chamfered brick arched head, approached via a narrow access passage between two attached single-storey outbuildings. It is unclear whether these are additions, but the west wall of the western outbuilding forms a screen wall to the south of the tower and shares the dentil detailing of the main building. Both outbuildings have been altered. The approaches to both front and rear arches are defined by substantial brick retaining walls. Those to the entrance elevation are widely splayed and curved, sloping downwards from the arch to low terminal piers with stepped pyramidal caps. The walls are coped with moulded bricks set above a dentil course. The walls to the rear arch are straight rather than splayed, with plain triangular copings, and slope downwards from a short level section extending from the archway.

The interior plan of the building remains substantially intact, with rooms remodelled with some 20th-century fixtures and fittings. A single 19th-century hearth surround survives in an upper floor bedroom, and there are a number of plain planked doors. These and the spiral staircase are among the surviving features of interest within the building.