Kimberley Cemetery Chapel, Kimberley, Nottinghamshire

Summary

A small, stone-built late C19 cemetery chapel sited at the top of the hill which forms the cemetery landscape, thus giving the building visual prominence as the centrepiece of the cemetery.

Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 07/08/2015

The Kimberley Cemetery Mortuary Chapel, designed in a Free Gothic style, is the principal building within the cemetery landscape, and occupies a prominent hilltop site.

MATERIALS
The chapel is built of coursed rock-faced gritstone rising from a shallow ashlar plinth with ashlar dressings and carved ornamentation, and incorporates polished granite shafts with foliage capitals within the doorway surrounds. The building has a plain-tile roof covering with decorative pierced ridge tiles.

PLAN
The chapel is oriented north-south and has an apsidal south end, with east and west porches.

EXTERIOR
The chapel is single storied, with a gabled north wall supporting a bellcote. The east elevation has a gabled porch with a steeply-pitched roof and ashlar copings and a wide pointed arch-headed doorway with a moulded ashlar surround rising from short polished granite shafts with foliage capitals. Above the arch is a hood mould with head stops. The doorway has a pair of vertically-boarded doors with decorative iron hinges. The porch side walls have small lancets. To the north of the porch are two bays separated by a low buttress, each bay with a pair of plain lancets. The north gable has low stepped buttresses to each corner, a pair of tall lancets with cusped quatrefoil traceried heads below hood moulds and a traceried circular window to the gable apex. Between the lancets is a central stepped buttress. The detailing to the west elevation, replicated that to the east side of the chapel, with a gabled porch and paired lancets separated by a buttress. The west chapel porch has paired sidewall lancets and a small triangular ventilator to each roof pitch. The curved south end of the chapel incorporates five small lancets separated by low buttresses.

INTERIOR.
The chapel interior is brick-lined, with rubbed brickwork window arch heads below hood moulds. The roof is underboarded, and is supported by a wide moulded ashlar arch rising from short shafts with decorative capitals at the apsidal south end and two roof trusses with cusped bracing in the main body of the chapel. There is a plain blue tile dado topped by a band of tiles with floral decoration which incorporates a number of inscriptions in white lettering on a brown ground. That to the apse reads ' I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE SAITH THE LORD', that to the north end reads 'MORS JANUA VITAE'. On the east side wall the inscription reads 'THOUGH AFTER DEATH WORMS DEVOUR MY BODY YET IN MY FLESH I SHALL SEE GOD', and the west side wall inscription reads 'HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD YET SHALL HE LIVE'.

FIXTURES AND FITTINGS.
The doorway to the west chapel has a pair of glazed doors which together form an arched head. The doors are flanked by cusped side lights, and are set below a curved overlight made up of three cusped semi-circles. This porch was designed to provide a separated enclosure for the coffins of those who had died from disease, and incorporated an underboarded roof with triangular ventilators. The glazed doors permitted those attending the funeral to view the coffin from the main body of the chapel.

History

The cemetery mortuary chapel at Kimberley Cemetery was built in 1883 to the designs of the Nottingham architect Richard Charles Sutton (1834-1915). Sutton was articled to Samuel Teulon, and began independent practice in Nottingham in 1859. He designed a large number of public and ecclesiastical buildings, including Ilkeston Town Hall, the Grand Jury Room at Nottingham's Shire Hall and Castle Gate Congregational Church in Nottingham.

The chapel is the focal point of the cemetery landscape, and is the sole chapel building to have been built within the cemetery. It is no longer in use as a cemetery chapel, but is the subject of proposals to modify the interior to create community facilities (2015).

Reasons for Listing

The Kimberley Cemetery Chapel in Nottinghamshire, built in 1883 to the designs of the Nottingham architect Richard Charles Sutton, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural interest: the building is a distinguished example of cemetery chapel architecture, well-proportioned and carefully detailed externally and internally using an eclectic range of building materials;

* Intactness: the chapel is well-preserved, with little significant alteration to the external fabric and good levels of survival to both structural and decorative elements of the interior;

* Landscape context: the chapel was clearly designed and located to be the focal element of the cemetery landscape, symbolically sited on the hilltop around and on which the other elements of the cemetery are arranged.

External Links

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