Lye And Wollescote Cemetery Chapel

The Lye and Wollescote Cemetery Chapel, dated 1878, was designed by Smalman Smith of Stourbridge and comprises a pair of chapels with connecting lobbies and a vestry. The building is constructed of red brick in English bond, with ashlar and black brick dressings, and a gabled roof of banded plain and fishscale tiles. The design is Gothic in style, with an H-shaped, single-storey plan. The central feature is an octagonal spire clad in white brick. The entrance front has a central steeple with paired, half-glazed doors featuring tracery panels and an arched top. Above the doors is a clock face, added in 1912 and housed within an ogee frame, with two small, screened windows to the belfry above. The tower has angle buttresses that rise to pinnacles and terminate in small spirelets. Above the fretwork parapet, the spire has angled ribs and a weathervane dated 1878. To either side of the central steeple are three-light windows with segmental pointed heads and hood moulds; triangular dormers are set into the roof above these. Projecting from either side are the chapel bodies, each featuring three-light windows with Decorated tracery. The side elevations are similar, with paired two-light windows at the centre, flanked by single lancets and buttresses. Four basement windows with flat heads are present on the right flank. The rear has a projecting central gabled wing with three lancet windows. Flanking this wing are three-light windows, similar to those on the front elevation, and double doors in gabled, buttressed surrounds that slightly project from the wall surface to each gable. Rose windows are located at the centre of each gable. The steps leading to the left-hand chapel doors have been lost, while the doors to the right-hand chapel are now accessed by a 20th-century brick ramp. Internally, the chapels have hammer beam roofs and plasterwork imitating ashlar blocks, with patterned stained glass in the windows. Original pews were removed, but were believed to be in storage during a 2004 survey. The floors are of polychromatic encaustic tiles, extending into the entrance lobbies and passageways. A stone spiral staircase rises to the clock room and belfry. The chapels retain a significant proportion of their original architectural features and are well-designed and richly decorated.