Chapel Lodge

Cemetery lodge and chapel, c.1897, by Edward James Shrewsbury.

The building comprises a red brick and Bath stone lodge with a clay tile roof, and a red brick and timber chapel, also with a clay tile roof.

The lodge is planned as a three-storey tower, approximately square on plan, with one room on each floor. An octagonal corner turret to the north-east contains an entrance lobby on the ground floor and a winding stair above. A two-storey extension to the north contains a kitchen on the ground floor with bedroom and bathroom above. The chapel to the south is a single-cell cruciform structure with large double doors to the east and west, connected to the ground floor of the tower by a connecting door. A flat-roofed toilet block extension to the south is not of special interest.

The lodge tower forms the central and dominant element of the complex. It has three brick storeys with stone quoins above a two-stage stone plinth. Double string-courses mark the division between ground and first floors, with single string-courses above. A moulded stone cornice beneath a pyramidal tiled roof with lead finial crowns the composition. Each floor has a two-light Gothic window to the front (east) and rear. Those on the lower two floors are larger and have hood-moulds; the smaller top-floor window projects through the eaves to form a gabled half-dormer. The windows have diamond-paned leaded glazing, some of which has been replaced with modern glass. A tall ridged and corbelled stack rises from the south wall, and a narrow embattled terrace runs along the north side. The octagonal turret to the north-east corner has a boarded entrance door set in a Gothic arch and small lancet windows that light the stairs and form a lantern in the ashlar-faced top stage. The two-storey hipped-roof extension to the north has square-headed windows of one, two and three lights, some with mullions removed.

The single-storey chapel to the south is of brick and white-painted timber, with much carved woodwork and patterned leaded glazing. The timber-framed central cross-wing has double doors to the front and rear with stepped lancet lights beneath a four-centred arch with carved spandrels, above which are six small quatrefoil windows in moulded surrounds. Herringbone brickwork in the gable has a timber cross superimposed, and the eaves feature elaborately-carved barge-boards. Lower flanking wings have three-light square-headed windows with timber mullions.

The interiors are very simple throughout. In the lodge, plain panelled doors serve rooms and cupboards, some now missing. Small ornamental fireplaces occupy the upper floors of the tower, though the ground-floor example has been replaced. A plain timber balustrade runs to the second-floor landing. The chapel has an open timber roof, a polychromatic tiled floor and a fitted bench against the end wall.

Unlike most towns of any size, the borough of Maidenhead did not establish a municipal cemetery in the wake of the Burial Acts of the 1850s. In 1888, a private concern, the Maidenhead Cemetery Company, acquired land on the outer fringe of the town at Boyne Hill for a subscription-based cemetery, later known as All Saints after the nearby church. Accommodation for a resident caretaker was soon required, and the local architect Edward James Shrewsbury was commissioned to design a building at the entrance to the site that would serve as caretaker's cottage, gatehouse and mortuary chapel. This building, with an extension to the north, was complete by 1897. During the 1950s the site passed to the Borough Council but was superseded as a place of burial by the newer cemetery at Braywick. The lodge and chapel were sold to a private owner in 2010.

Edward James Shrewsbury (1852-1924) began in practice at Maidenhead in 1875 and went on to become the town's leading architect of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among his works are the Jubilee clock tower on Station Approach (1901), the former Technical School on Marlow Road (1896), and the churches of St Peter, Furze Platt (1897) and St John, Littlewick Green (1893). Among his pupils was the renowned Arts and Crafts architect and designer Henry Wilson.