Red Mount Chapel

Red Mount Chapel, located on The Walks in King's Lynn, is a unique brick building dating from 1483-85, with subsequent work completed between 1505 and 1506. Originally a wayside chapel on the Walsingham pilgrimage route, it was constructed by Robert Curraunt, with later contributions attributed to Simon Clerk and John Wastell.

The chapel is octagonal, built using two concentric octagonal drums, the outer constructed of brick and the inner of ashlar around a brick core. The exterior features random bond brickwork with ashlar dressings. The building is two storeys high on the outer drum and three storeys high on the inner drum, with stepped buttresses supporting the corners, each featuring an arched opening. The main entrance, to the west, is accessed via a timber studded door under a depressed arch, flanked by trefoil niches. Quatrefoil lights and two-light mullioned windows are regularly spaced around the chapel, with a four-light stone mullioned window with depressed heads and a straight hood mould on the top floor of the outer drum. A subsidiary entrance is on the north-east facet at ground floor, and a further four-light stone mullioned window with hollow, roll and fillet mouldings on the facet clockwise.

The inner drum rises above the roofline, its cruciform shape illuminated by a single encircled quatrefoil oculus on each of the four main facets.

The interior comprises a barrel-vaulted cellar below the twin drums, which are octagonal below the ashlar chapel. Between the skins of the structure are two brick staircases with a roll-moulded handrail cut into the inner wall, each starting at an external doorway and winding counter-clockwise to an antechamber. A six-light stone mullioned window with hollow and ovolo mouldings looks down into the basement from near the main entrance. Two diamond-pane leaded casements remain. The central core is largely brick with ashlar dressings, transitioning to ashlar with brick dressings in the upper storeys, culminating in a completely ashlar chapel. Evidence of design changes and construction breaks are visible on the top floor of the outer drum. Historic graffiti from the 17th and 18th centuries is also present. The staircases emerge at the chapel, forming an ambulatory, with 20th-century timber steps leading to the cruciform sanctuary, also attributed to Clerk and Wastell. This sanctuary features an elaborate fan-vaulted roof with recurring encircled quatrefoil motifs and panel tracery. The chapel is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.