Description

10012

CHICHESTER
Chapel at Greylingwell Hospital

II

Chapel. Built 1895-7 as the chapel to the West Sussex County Lunatic Asylum, later known as Graylingwell Hospital, to the design of Sir Arthur Blomfield and Sons.

MATERIALS: Faced in local flint with ashlar dressings. Clay tile roof.

PLAN: Detached, with 4-bay nave, side aisles, S transept, and chancel comprising short choir and sanctuary. W end has narthex porch with central entrance, flanked by small projecting square porches, each with side doors, providing separate access for male and female patients, as well as small rest rooms.

EXTERIOR: Early English Gothic Revival. Triple lancet windows to E wall; 2 pairs of lancets to W wall; lancet windows to aisles and oculi to clerestorey. Transept window has plate tracery. Flèche to E gable-end of nave.

INTERIOR: Simply-furnished interior has benches to nave and choir with poppyhead ends. E and W walls have good figurative stained glass by Heaton, Butler and Bayne. Also memorial window to hospital staff killed in the First World War. Pulpit with ogee arches and carved spandrels. Coloured mosaic reredos. Crown-post roof.

HISTORY:The hospital was built 1895-7 as the West Sussex County Lunatic Asylum, to the design of Sir Arthur Blomfield and Sons in a Queen Anne style. Blocks were added in 1901-2, bringing the capacity up to 750 beds. Three further blocks and a nurses' home were built in 1933, the capacity now being 1,045 beds. The site was divided with female and male accommodation on different sides of the echelon, as was typical, and this is reflected in the design of the Chapel with its separate entrances.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: A good, intact example of a large, detached asylum chapel of 1895-7, almost parish-church like in scale, designed by by Sir Arthur Blomfield, with fine stained-glass windows. The separate male and female entrances, as well as the small rest rooms identify its specialist original function. It is an important feature in the hospital grounds, which are registered as an historic park.

SOURCES: Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, English Hospitals 1660-1948, 1998.

SU8665406435

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26676463

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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