Padley Chapel

Padley Chapel is a former gatehouse and chapel, dating to the 14th and 15th centuries, with later alterations. It is now a Roman Catholic chapel and was originally part of a quadrangular house, the foundations of which remain to the northeast. The building is constructed of coursed squared gritstone, with a particularly massive southwest elevation set on a low, chamfered plinth. It features quoins, a decorative corbel table, a large projecting stack to the southwest wall, and a stone-slated roof with a cross finial to the southeast end.

The southwest elevation is two stories high, with four bays, although the floor has been removed from the northwest part. An off-centre gateway has a deeply chamfered, shallow arched head and surround, with 20th-century plank double doors. A single doorway with a chamfered lintel and surround, also with a 20th-century plank door, is located at the northwest end. A wide buttress rises steeply to the first-floor level between the doorways, but disturbed masonry suggests a rebuilding of what was formerly an external stack, similar in size to the one that remains to the southeast. Above the buttress is a small two-light mullioned window formed from a single stone, with lancet lights. A massive external stack is shouldered at the eaves to the southeast of the gateway. On the southeast end, a chamfered cross window is on the first floor, above a ground-floor slit window with a chamfered surround. The northeast elevation features two-light cross windows above two-light chamfered mullioned windows, either side of the gateway access to the former courtyard, which has a shallow arched head and 20th-century plank doors. Two former doorways, now windows with stained glass and four-centred arched heads, are at first-floor level to the southeast of the gateway and were once served by an external stair. Stone perches and access holes are visible in the gable apex, indicative of a former dovecote.

The interior comprises a double-purlin roof with cambered tie beam trusses against the gable walls and a central truss, the latter with partition studs above the tie beam and mortices to the tie beam soffit for a former ground-floor partition. The two intermediate trusses are arch braced and feature carved angels at the ends of their hammer beams. The wall posts have carved feet resting on moulded corbels. Aumbries, one ogee-headed is on the southeast wall, to the southwest of the window, alongside a reset altarstone from the ruins of the adjacent manor house. Hearths are visible at ground and first-floor levels on the southwest wall.

The chapel commemorates the martyrdom of Nicholas Garlic and Robert Ludlum, Catholic priests, who were arrested at Padley Hall on 12 July 1588 and executed at St Mary’s Bridge, Derby, on 24 July 1588. The Fitzherbert family of Padley Hall were subsequently persecuted; John Fitzherbert died in the Tower of London in November 1590.