St Monica'S Chapel, St Monica'S Home Of Rest

This is a chapel, built in 1925 by Sir George Oatley for HH Wills. It is located on Cote Lane in Stoke Bishop, Bristol. The chapel is constructed of squared, coursed Pennant rubble with limestone ashlar detailing, and has a tiled roof. It is designed in the Perpendicular Gothic Revival style.

The east end features buttresses leading to a tall central gable with a large two-centred arched five-light window containing ogee heads, a transom, and panel tracery. Flanking pinnacles and shallower gables have four-centred arched three-light windows with hoods and foliate stops, a sill mould, a cornice carved with beast heads, and a good parapet of openwork quatrefoils and a finial, above an undercroft which has paired windows in the middle and three-light windows to the side gables, beneath a drip course. The same design is repeated on the north side, with a projecting two-bay organ room and a blind west bay. An octagonal ashlar bell tower is set into the re-entrant angle of the chapel, featuring a square belfry with angle buttresses terminating in pinnacles, three-light windows, open Tudor-arched windows, a crested parapet, and a weathered roof with a finial. A matching south elevation features the same design, excluding the bell tower. The west elevation, attached to the rear of St Monica’s Home of Rest, has a wide four-centred window.

Inside, the east end incorporates blind tracery panels around the window, as well as a piscina and sedilia with attached crocketed pinnacles. The south Lady Chapel and north organ bay contain a pipe organ by ‘Father’ Willis. A timber reredos features open two-centred arches, fan vaulted ceilings above linenfold panelling, and a raised crucifix with flanking figures. The nave windows have blind tracery panels, and stone benches run along the sides. The west end has four blind arches flanking the central Tudor-arched doorway, fan vaults leading to a moulded band and two-centred arched panels to the gallery parapet. The roof is supported by arch-braced tie beams resting on angel corbels.

The design, while exceptionally detailed, incorporates anachronistic elements and motifs, such as the blind panelling and gallery, drawn from the Wills Tower (designed in 1914).