Kimberley Cemetery Chapel

Kimberley Cemetery Mortuary Chapel

The Kimberley Cemetery Mortuary Chapel is a Free Gothic style building that serves as the principal structure within the cemetery landscape, occupying a prominent hilltop site.

The chapel is constructed of coursed rock-faced gritstone rising from a shallow ashlar plinth with ashlar dressings and carved ornamentation. The doorway surrounds incorporate polished granite shafts with foliage capitals. The building is covered with a plain-tile roof with decorative pierced ridge tiles.

The chapel is oriented north-south and features an apsidal south end with east and west porches. It is a single-storied structure with a gabled north wall that supports a bellcote.

The east elevation contains a gabled porch with a steeply pitched roof and ashlar copings. The porch entrance is a wide pointed arch-headed doorway with a moulded ashlar surround rising from short polished granite shafts with foliage capitals. Above the arch is a hood mould with head stops. The doorway itself has a pair of vertically-boarded doors with decorative iron hinges. The porch side walls contain small lancets. To the north of the porch are two bays separated by a low buttress, each containing a pair of plain lancets. The north gable has low stepped buttresses at each corner and features a pair of tall lancets with cusped quatrefoil traceried heads below hood moulds. A traceried circular window sits in the gable apex, with a central stepped buttress positioned between the lancets. The west elevation replicates the detailing of the east side, with a gabled porch and paired lancets separated by a buttress. This porch has paired sidewall lancets and small triangular ventilators to each roof pitch. The curved south end incorporates five small lancets separated by low buttresses.

The chapel interior is brick-lined with rubbed brickwork forming the window arch heads beneath hood moulds. The roof is underboarded and supported by a wide moulded ashlar arch rising from short shafts with decorative capitals at the apsidal south end, and two roof trusses with cusped bracing in the main body of the chapel. A plain blue tile dado runs around the interior, topped by a band of tiles with floral decoration incorporating inscriptions in white lettering on a brown ground. The apse inscription reads "I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE SAITH THE LORD", the north end reads "MORS JANUA VITAE", the east side wall reads "THOUGH AFTER DEATH WORMS DEVOUR MY BODY YET IN MY FLESH I SHALL SEE GOD", and the west side wall reads "HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD YET SHALL HE LIVE".

The west chapel porch features a pair of glazed doors forming an arched head when closed together, flanked by cusped side lights. These are set beneath a curved overlight made up of three cusped semi-circles. This porch was designed as a separate enclosure for coffins of those who had died from disease, with an underboarded roof and triangular ventilators. The glazed doors allowed those attending funerals to view the coffin from the main body of the chapel.