Rippleside Cemetery Chapel and Gates

Rippleside Cemetery Chapel and Gates

This cemetery chapel was built in 1886 by the Burial Board of the Parish of St Margaret Barking, designed by architect Charles J Dawson. It is constructed of ragstone with ashlar dressings and some flint chequerwork, with a clay tile roof.

The chapel is aligned north-east to south-west and comprises a three-bay nave with a large porch occupying the easternmost bay, a lower single-bay chancel, a north-west tower, and an adjacent vestry. It is designed in Perpendicular style as a scaled-down parish church.

The gabled Tudor-style porch is timber-framed on a stone plinth with an arched entrance and open mullion-and-transom windows to the front and sides. The doorway features a four-centred arch within a square-headed surround with dripmoulds and lozenge stops, and has vertical boarded doors with decorative hingework. The tower, which echoes that of the parish church of St Margaret Barking, is divided into two stages by a broad band of flint chequerwork. It has diagonal buttresses and a taller octagonal stair turret with open lights at the top. The tower doorway is identical to the main entrance. Each of the north and west faces of the upper stage contains a four-centred arched window with paired cusped cinquefoil lights. The nave has a large west window with perpendicular tracery, and the upper gable is faced in chequerwork with a narrow window. The other nave windows are mullioned and transomed with dripmoulds and cusped cinquefoil heads to the upper lights; the chancel has a pair of identical windows. Entrances on the north and south sides of the chancel have glazed panelled doors.

Inside, the nave features a hammer-beam roof with moulded drop finials and enriched ribs and purlins, while the chancel has a plain-boarded ceiling. A broad chancel arch is fitted with a wrought-iron screen. The nave floor is laid with encaustic tiles; the chancel floor has red and black tiles in a chequered pattern. The west window contains eight stained-glass panels depicting the four authors of the Gospels—Isaiah, Peter, Paul and Jeremiah—with additional panels showing episodes in the life of Christ and the saints. One panel commemorates the daughter of Hugh Herbert Mason, Chairman of the Burial Board, who died in 1896 aged 13. A timber pulpit with panelled sides and stone steps stands in the north-east corner of the nave.

Charles J Dawson (1850–1933) was surveyor to Barking Local Board from 1883 and to Barking Town Urban District Council from 1895. He designed numerous public buildings in Barking, including the Public Offices and Library on East Street (1893), as well as several schools in Barking and adjacent districts. He also restored the parish church of St Margaret, Barking. Rippleside Cemetery itself was opened in 1886.