Former Chapel at HMS Pembroke

The former Chapel at HMS Pembroke is a Romanesque Revival style chapel, constructed around 1905. The chancel was remodelled in 1948 by Edward Maufe. It is built of red brick with stone dressings and a slate roof.

The building features an apsidal chancel, transepts, and an aisled nave. The exterior includes a moulded stone plinth, two cill bands, and overhanging eaves, with buttresses between the aisle and upper windows. There are small round-arched aisle and west windows, and taller round-arched upper windows. The chancel has five bays and an apse of seven bays, and a man-of-war weather vane is present. Gabled north and south transepts have three lower windows and a single upper window, with an oculus in the gable. The eleven-bay aisle has a matching west porch with a round-arched door and strap hinges, and an eleven-bay nave. A three-bay bellcote at the east end features three open round-arched openings for bells and a round central pediment with finial. The gabled west end has three bays separated by buttresses, single lower windows to the outer bays, and a stepped five-light round-arched upper window over a half-domed central apse. The south transept has a parapeted east vestry with a porch featuring a weathered ashlar roof and gabled round-arched doorway.

The interior of the chapel contains a chancel with a boarded and ribbed wooden barrel vault painted to represent a night sky, the ribs supported by clasped marble shafts. The nave has an arch-braced crown post roof on moulded corbels, with octagonal piers to aisle arcades featuring double hollow chamfer arches dying into the piers, and narrow aisles. The fittings, all dating to around 1905, include an organ, free-standing altar candle sticks, a lectern, and pews. A reredos from 1916, designed by W.D. Caröe, depicts an allegory of the Allies in the First World War. Stained glass windows in the nave primarily depict Chatham ships and a memorial to George V.

This chapel was originally part of the early 20th century HMS Pembroke naval barracks, alongside the Captain’s House, Mess block, barracks and ancillary buildings. Its design is similar to the chapel at HMS Drake in Plymouth.