Mortuary Chapel In Abbey Cemetery

Mortuary Chapel in Abbey Cemetery

A cemetery chapel built in 1844 by G. P. Manners, located on the west side of Ralph Allen Drive in Bath. The building is constructed from limestone ashlar with a beaver-tail slate roof.

The chapel is a bold single-cell neo-Norman design arranged in three bays with a square east end. A distinctive square tower rises above a porte-cochere, topped with a square pyramidal stone spire.

The four-stage tower features clasping buttresses. The ground floor stage has arched openings on three sides with steps leading to the porch. The main opening is taller, flanked by triple shafts with cushion capitals and deep chevron moulding to the voussoirs. The side openings have single shafts similarly detailed. The second stage displays blind intersecting arcading with a lancet opening in the centre. The third stage has a corbel-table and two-light louvred belfry openings under plain tympanum on each face, set between shafts carrying an arched hood. The final stage comprises the broad pyramidal spire with finial above a corbel-table.

A small stair turret rises through the first two stages on the left, with a narrow door and two slit lights. The porte-cochere stands on a sandstone landing reached by three steps and features quadripartite vaulting on ribs springing from corbels. The inner arch has scalloped embellishment and is worked in two orders. Plank and strap-hinge doors rise into the arch and have a protective grille.

The broad nave contains three Norman lights with nook shafts set high on each side, separated by flat buttresses returned at their head to Lombard bands. Plinth, sill band and impost band are threaded to the buttresses. Coped gables on moulded kneelers are finished with an open stone terminal cross to the east. The east end has a rose window with trefoil tracery set in a panel under a Lombard band following the gable slope, with a moulded band to corbel table and flat intersecting blind arcade below. The north side features a straight flight of sixteen stone steps within retaining walls with horizontal coping at right-angles to the wall. A round-arched doorway with a plank door provides access to the crypt.

The interior is a single cell with an open timber queen-post trussed roof. The west entrance has an arched moulding. The east end contains a broad round-arched recess to the centre flanked by smaller arches, all with shafts featuring scalloped cushion capitals. The windows have splayed recesses but are blocked up. An unusual series of marble memorial tablets with matching surrounds of billet-moulded Bath stone runs around the interior. An arcade of arched marble tablets with similar surrounds runs along the lower wall, creating highly contextual surrounds for monuments whilst preserving the overall Norman effect of the interior. Some pews and a lectern remain stored within.

Abbey Cemetery was one of three cemeteries laid out by John Claudius Loudon, the leading figure in early Victorian landscape design. The cemetery was designed in 1843 as one of Loudon's final projects and represents his best example of cemetery design theory, fusing a formal layout with informal planting. It was established on land formerly part of the Prior Park estate and was opened for use by the Bishop of Salisbury on 30 January 1844. The chapel forms a prominent feature in the landscape of Bath's south-eastern fringes, notable for the depth of its modelling and vigour of decoration as well as its scale and dominant position overlooking the cemetery. The spire was reconstructed in 1996–97. The cemetery survives remarkably intact and is now in the guardianship of Bath City Council.