Chapel Of The Royal Anglian Regiment And Essex Regiment

Chapel of the Royal Anglian Regiment and the Essex Regiment

Chapel, built in 1857 by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt. The building is constructed in yellow brick with red brick detailing and string courses, with slate roofs. It is designed in the Early Christian style.

The chapel consists of a nave with clerestory, side aisles, and a chancel with an eastern apse. A campanile was added around 1955 to the south of the west end.

The south elevation runs west to east with a campanile in yellow brick featuring a ground-floor round-headed window and a colonnaded belfry of four round-headed arches topped with a pyramidal copper roof. The nave extends for five bays with clerestory and side aisle, displaying coupled round-arched windows in square recessed panels with red brick corbel table. The eastern bay contains a framed and panelled door with linenfold decoration and stylised leaves. The chancel has a single round-headed clerestory window, and a small single-storey transverse gabled block (in the style of a prothesis or diaconicon) adjoins the aisle, with coupled segment-headed windows.

The north elevation is similar to the south except that the aisle stops short of the west end by one bay. It features a ground-floor window and a coupled pair of round-arched windows under a round-headed arched label. At the east end, a single-storey gabled final bay contains a round-headed window, with the chancel continuing with a single round-headed window.

The east elevation shows the chancel end wall with recessed red brick panels and a cusped corbel table. The lower apse contains five round-headed windows, with south and north gabled units at ground floor level featuring recessed panels with windows coupled under round-arched labels. The south gabled unit has a boarded door with decorative ironwork.

The west end elevation features the campanile to the south with ground-floor coupled round-arched windows under an arched label, a tall round-headed window to the first floor, and the belfry matching the south elevation. The nave displays a large recessed panel with cusped red brick corbel table and an octofoil rose window in a square recess. The ground floor contains a round-headed west doorway with a red brick label and tympanum with mosaic panels, nook shafts with leaf capitals. Above the doorway is a decorative red brick gable with cusped red brick corbel tables on either side and two round-headed windows on each side. The door is framed with linenfold panels with upper leaf decoration. The north aisle features coupled round-arched windows under a round-arched label.

The interior contains stone piers with leaf capitals and dosserets supporting arcades of round arches with nail-head decoration. The clerestory forms a continuous arcade of paired windows under an arch with linking minor blind recessed arches. The chancel is defined by a triple arcade across the church with two additional arches defining the presbytery and apse. The roof comprises simple king posts and queen struts on straight tie-beams. Side aisles have wooden panelled dado. Both the east and west ends of the nave feature delicate classical wooden screens in Tuscan style. A gallery is located at the west end. The pews have ends carved with memorial inscriptions and heraldry. A pedestal-type pulpit is present.