Chapel Of St Francis' Hospital

The Chapel of St Francis' Hospital is a Grade II listed building, originally part of a lunatic asylum, constructed in 1859 by H E Kendall junior. It is designed in a vigorous Lombardo-Venetian style and features yellow brick with red brick decoration, some stone dressings, and a slate roof. The chapel has a wide three-bay nave with aisles, a short sanctuary, and a slender northeastern campanile. Architectural details include a plinth, banding, a deep pseudo-entablature with small pedimented kneelers on the gables, and windows in the aisles that have two lights with quatrefoils at the heads. The radiating brickwork creates an extrados that is more acute than the intrados, and there are trefoil-headed doorways. The campanile mirrors the chapel's decoration and windows, featuring a heavy cornice and a pyramidal roof. Inside, the arcade is unmoulded above the capital and has paired columns with foliated capitals and half-column responds. The roof is shallow-pitched with cusped queen post construction and cusped arched braces that spring from corbels. The chapel has an apse at the west end and a barrel-vaulted sanctuary at the east end. This original and successful design complements the more severe main block of the hospital.