Bromsgrove School Memorial Chapel

The Bromsgrove School Memorial Chapel, built in 1931 to designs by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and constructed by J and A. Brazier Ltd for Bromsgrove School, was extended to the west by one bay in 1960. The chapel is built of pale brown brick with Clipsham stone dressings and has plain tile roofs. It is long and rectangular, dominated by the nave. The design is in an abstracted Late Gothic style. The east window is a five-light Perpendicular window with curvilinear tracery separating a central panel, with deeply angled buttresses flanking the chancel and Gothic tracery in brickwork to the upper courses. Decorated style windows are set within narrow gable ends. The nave has five bays, each with a three-light flat-headed window featuring round-arched lights. Each bay is articulated by a stone-capped buttress that incorporates downpipes and slopes outwards to a deeply-splayed plinth. Large buttresses with gablets divide the nave from a western porch, which has double doors within a chamfered stone surround, flanked by two-light mullioned windows linked by a Caernarvon arch. A north wall has two four-light mullioned windows, illuminating an inner vestibule, while the south wall features a deeply angled buttress housing the gallery stairs and lit by two small lancets.

Inside, the chapel is characterised by a soaring, arch-braced, open timber roof based on medieval designs, springing from stone corbels. Adze-faced oak was used to evoke the feel of a medieval tithe barn. The pews and choir stalls are made of Japanese oak. The limed oak altar and reredos show the influence of the Bromsgrove Guild in their exceptional craftsmanship. The reredos depicts an Ascension scene set within an upward-sweeping panel framed by delicate openwork tracery. Stained glass is present in the west end and the east window.

The chapel was constructed as a memorial to boys of Bromsgrove School who died in the First World War. Scott’s design is similar to the chapel at Charterhouse School, Godalming (designated Grade II*), displaying a fusion of Arts and Crafts and Gothic styles, as well as bold design and meticulous craftsmanship.