Clayhall Royal Naval Cemetery Chapel

Chapel of rest, 1859.

MATERIALS: the chapel is built from red brick laid in Flemish bond with blue brick detailing, limestone dressings and tiled roofs. The window frames are metal.

PLAN: the chapel stands with the liturgical west end facing south, in line with the main entranceway and path into the cemetery. It consists of a three-bay nave, with a vestry on the west (liturgical north), and a porch on the south (liturgical west).

EXTERIOR: the building exhibits a strict uniformity of architectural devices across the elevations. The windows are narrow, Romanesque lancets with deep moulded stone cills, recessed brick architraves and blue headers that adjoin cill and impost bands of blue brick. Rafter feet project beneath the eaves and there is a plinth emphasised by offset blue brick.

The west end has a central pitched roofed porch with a wide Norman-style arch with billet, chevron and dog-tooth mouldings and head stops. It has brick buttresses at the angles with stone offsets, and there are stone kneelers to the gable which has a course of blue brick at the eaves, and stone copings. The return elevations each have two blue brick-lined porthole windows. Above the porch on the west gable end are three windows, the central one of which is taller. At the apex to the gable is a stone bell cote with a cross finial and dog tooth mouldings to the arched opening, which contains a brass bell.

The three bays of the nave are articulated by buttresses; each bay has a single lancet. The east end has three windows, as per the west, and buttresses at the angles. The vestry is a pitched roofed range with a pair of lancets on the gable.

INTERIOR: the nave is a single open space with a red, buff and black tiled floor; a break in the pattern denotes the line of the altar. There is a timber reredos of three Gothic-arched panels with simple mouldings, and a timber pulpit with a round-arched screen on which a lectern with scrolled, foliate wrought iron brackets is attached. Pews are freestanding. The vestry door is in a moulded Romanesque archway, and has fielded panelling. The roof is matchboarded beneath A-frame principal rafters with chamfered edges, supported on moulded corbels.