Description

CREWKERNE

ST4409 YEOVIL ROAD 876-1/7/173 (South side) Townsend Cemetery mortuary chapels and bell tower

II

Bell tower and cemetery chapels. c1874. MATERIALS: Ham Hill stone bell tower, dressings and plinth capping to chapels; limestone rubble chapels with crested slate roofs and decorative upper courses, hipped to the outer ends. PLAN: the bell tower is flanked symmetrically by L-plan chapels. EXTERIOR: Decorated Gothic Revival style. The tower is square with high pointed arches to front and rear with lower side ones to entrances to chapels. The square columns to front and rear are chamfered with plinths, stiff-leaf capitals and set-back arches. Resting on the corners of the top are octagonal turrets with spirlets which flank tall pointed-arched gabled openings with quatrefoil plates in the tympana. The spire is octagonal with pierced quatrefoils near the top of each facet and a gilded cockerel weather vane. The chapels, linked to the tower by short low corridors with 3 pointed-arch windows to all sides, have large cinqefoil windows in the apexes facing the tower. The outer ends of the chapel are canted bays; each facet is gabled with 2-light trefoil-headed windows with quatrefoils between the tops. Short gable wings with similar 2-light windows project forward to far left and right; to inside left and right are 2 single light trefoil headed windows. All windows are leaded, those to the gables have geometric ornamental coloured glass. INTERIOR: the interiors of the chapels are painted plaster with stone dressings. The entrances to the gabled wings are through tall paired pointed arches with beaded jambs, moulded imposts and wide moulding to the arches. The wooden ceilings are arch-braced, the braces to the bays rest on short colonnettes, one meeting the arches at off-centre are on bosses, and those coinciding with the central piers are on colonnettes which reach the ground, passing throught the impost band and a high stone dado rail which surrounds both interiors. The floors are polychromatic tiles with a step up to the bays. The principal element of a fine group of Victorian cemetery structures.

Listing NGR: ST4494109996

External Links

• Wikidata Q26570923

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Recommended Books

• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
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  Liverpool: Pevsner City Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
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  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Derbyshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)