Roman Catholic Chapel at Earlham Cemetery

A cemetery chapel in the Gothic style, built in 1874-5 as an addition to the Earlham Cemetery in Norwich to provide facilities for Roman Catholic burials. The chapel was built to the designs of the architect John Bond Pearce (1843-1904).

MATERIALS: the chapel is built of split flint with ashlar dressings beneath a steeply-pitched roof with a Welsh slate roof covering, coped gables and cross finials.

PLAN: the building is of rectangular, three-bay, two-cell form, with a nave and apsidal sanctuary.

EXTERIOR: the chapel is orientated east-west. The entrance is in the west gable, and is set within a shallow gabled and buttressed porch. The doorway has a moulded, pointed-arched surround, the arch springing from imposts supported by slender black marble shafts with foliated capitals. The porch has a coped gable with a cross finial. Above the porch is a ten-light wheel window within a heavily-moulded surround, and above again, in the gable apex, a quatrefoil plaque bearing the date 'A D 1875'. The corners of the building have low clasping buttresses, and the side walls incorporate two paired, pointed-arched windows with trefoil and quatrefoil tracery to the arch heads set below hood moulds with foliated stops. The window openings are linked by a continuous string course interrupted by a low gabled buttress at the wall mid-point. At the south-east corner is a tall, slender octagonal spire with miniature lucarnes and paired lancets to the bell stage. The chapel has a small polygonal apse lit by tall slender lancets.

INTERIOR: the roof structure is supported by lightweight double hammer beam trusses and a single tier of purlins. The trusses at either end of the roof are set against the sanctuary arch wall and the west gable, and are supported on wall corbels with foliage decoration. The window reveals of the side wall windows are set beneath single arches, each with a hood mould with foliated stops. The moulded arches rise from slender black marble shafts. The sanctuary has a pierced wooden cornice with quatrefoil decoration.

FIXTURES AND FITTINGS:the building is now used for storage purposes, but retains a small table altar in the sanctuary, and several, small, wall monuments to clergy associated with the chapel.