Cemetery chapels, gateway and boundary walls to Blandford Cemetery

Cemetery chapels, gateway and boundary walls to Blandford Cemetery

A pair of cemetery chapels, entrance gateway and boundary walls dating from 1855, designed by James B Green of Blandford.

The cemetery occupies an irregular plot at a prominent road junction, with roads to the south and west sides. The entrance is from Salisbury Road, to the south. This frontage is occupied to the right by the former cemetery superintendent's house (not included in this assessment), and slightly left of centre by the recessed, curving entrance way. A central path leads from the entrance to an oval with the two cemetery chapels facing each other across a central green, defined by symmetrical paths. A war memorial now stands on the green. The cemetery surrounds the buildings on all sides. Boundary walls extend along both road fronts and the eastern boundary, as far as the return at the western side of Davis Gardens. A secondary entrance has been created at the north-western corner of the extended area.

The buildings are constructed of local rock-faced, squared and coursed stone and ashlar for the chapels and gatepiers. The chapels have plain clay tile roofs with fishscale details. The boundary walls are brick with stone capping.

The chapel exteriors are Gothic in style, with lancet windows with roll mouldings and plain block stops to the drip moulds. The Anglican and non-Conformist chapels are identical externally except for the addition of a bellcote and circular cross finial to the Anglican chapel, whereas the former non-Conformist chapel has tapering finials with small cross terminals. Each chapel is of three bays, with deep roofs featuring fishscale tile details and pierced ridge tiles, with raised, coped verges and carved kneelers. The bay structure is expressed by buttresses with two offsets. The long elevations have paired lancet windows to the outer bays, and a single lancet between them. The liturgical east ends have triple lancets, extending up into the gables. The entrance fronts have a pointed-arched double doorway and plate tracery window above, with three lancets of equal height below a circular window with quatrefoil tracery.

In the Anglican chapel, the roof structure has high, paired scissored collars with arch bracing and a short king post to the ridge, all chamfered, springing from stone corbels, with single purlins. The ceiling is laid with herringbone timber above the common rafters. The window openings are splayed internally; the windows have plain, diamond-pattern glazing with ventilation hoppers in the central windows. The chapel has hexagonal stone tiles to the floor. The walls have upright matchboard panelling to dado height. The pews date from 1855, and are set on the side walls rather than facing east. They have panelled fronts and ends, moulded top rails and shaped dividers to the seating. Circular brass chandeliers with chain and pendant details light the space.

The former non-Conformist chapel has an identical roof structure with high, paired scissored collars with arch bracing and a short king post to the ridge, all chamfered, springing from stone corbels, with single purlins. The ceiling is laid with herringbone timber above the common rafters. The window openings are splayed internally; the windows have plain, diamond-pattern glazing with ventilation hoppers in the central windows. The chapel has hexagonal stone tiles to the eastern half of the floor, with concrete beyond. The western half of the building has been subdivided horizontally. All fittings have been removed, and lightweight internal partitions have been set up.

The entrance way is marked by four Gothic stone piers of ashlar and rock-faced stone, set on a curve, creating a lenticular forecourt. The outer pair of piers is approximately 2 metres in height, with pyramidal caps in four courses. Between these and the taller gatepiers, with tall octagonal pointed caps and an offset in two courses, spear-headed railings stand on a dwarf wall with a plinth. The cemetery is bounded to the south and west, and in part to the east, by walls of brick dating from circa 1855 (that part towards the northern end of the Higher Shaftesbury Road boundary added in the 20th century to encompass the extension to the cemetery), varying in height slightly but around 1.5 metres high. The walls are double-skinned, with regular pilaster buttresses, and rounded capping bricks. An example from a fallen section of wall has an impressed heart as a maker's mark.