Gates Piers And Wall To St Marys Cemetery Chapel

The gates, piers, and wall to St Mary's Cemetery Chapel, also known as the entrance gates and walls of Winston Churchill Memorial Garden, date back to around 1831. They feature pinkish-brown brick walls with ashlar coping and stuccoed piers. The ornamental iron gates, designed by Thomas Letheren, replaced earlier gates by R.E. Marshall of Cheltenham. The gates include bars and scroll-headed dog-bars, with a central upper panel displaying a scroll motif and a floral scroll above, situated between ornamental iron piers. The adjoining coped walls are approximately one and a half metres long and two metres high, leading to tall square piers with moulded capping. The coped walls along the drive ramp down from the piers and extend for about forty-five metres, maintaining a height of two metres.

Historically, the New Burying Ground was acquired in 1830 due to overcrowding in the churchyard of St Mary's Church on Church Street. Letheren's gates were originally located at the entrance to Cypher's Nursery Gardens on Queen's Road and were installed after World War II. This structure is an important feature of the streetscape and is integral to the setting of St Mary's Cemetery Chapel.