Rippleside Cemetery Chapel and Gates

Reasons for Designation

Rippleside Cemetery Chapel is designated for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural interest: a distinctive and well-composed cemetery chapel, designed as a scaled-down parish church, which forms the focal point in the landscape
* Interior: the interior is little altered and retains most of its orginal fittings and attractive late-Victorian glass; the hammer-beam roof is an elaborate feature in a cemetery chapel

Details

971/0/10026

Rippleside Cemetery Chapel and Gates

16-MAR-11

II
Cemetery chapel. Built 1886 by the Burial Board of the Parish of St Margaret Barking. Architect Charles J Dawson.

MATERIALS: Ragstone with ashlar dressings, some flint chequerwork; clay tile roof.

PLAN: The chapel is aligned north-east/south-west; the plan, described liturgically, comprises a three-bay nave with a large porch in the easternmost bay; a lower, single-bay chancel; a north-west tower and adjacent vestry.

EXTERIOR: Perpendicular style, designed as a scaled-down parish church. The gabled Tudor-style porch is timber-framed on a stone plinth, with an arched entrance and open mullion-and-transom windows to the front and sides. The doorway has a four-centred arch set in a square-headed surround with dripmoulds and lozenge stops, and vertical boarded doors with decorative hingework. The tower, reminiscent of that to the parish church of St Margaret, Barking, is in two stages separated by a broad band of flint chequerwork, and has diagonal buttresses and a taller octagonal stair turret with open lights at the top. The doorway is identical to that of the main entrance. The north and west faces of the upper stage each have a four-centred arched window with paired cusped cinquefoil lights. The nave has a large west window with perpendicular tracery. The upper gable is faced in chequerwork and has a narrow window. The other nave windows are mullioned and transomed with dripmoulds and cusped cinquefoil heads to the upper lights; the chancel has a pair of identical windows. On the north and south sides of the chancel is an entrance with glazed panelled doors.

INTERIOR: The nave has a hammer-beam roof with moulded drop finials and enriched ribs and purlins; the chancel a plain-boarded ceiling. The broad chancel arch with wrought-iron screen. The nave floor has encaustic tiles; the chancel floor red and black tiles in a chequered pattern. The west window has eight stained-glass panels depicting the four authors of the Gospels: Isaiah, Peter, Paul and Jeremiah. The remainder depict episodes in the life of Christ and the saints. One commemorates the only daughter of Hugh Herbert Mason, Chairman of the Burial Board, who died in 1896 aged 13. There is a timber pulpit in the north-east corner of the nave, with panelled sides and stone steps.

HISTORY: Rippleside Cemetery was opened in 1886 by the Burial Board of the Parish of St Margaret Barking. Charles J Dawson (1850-1933) was surveyor to Barking Local Board from 1883, and to Barking Town Urban District Council from 1895,. He designed a number of public buildings in Barking including the Public Offices and Library, East Street (1893), as well as several schools in Barking and adjacent districts. He also restored the parish church of St Margaret, Barking.

SOURCES:
Cherry, B, O'Brien, C and Pevsner N, The Buildings of England: London 5: East' (2005)
RIBA Directory of British Architects 1834-1914 Vol. 1 (2001)

REASON FOR DESIGNATION: Rippleside Cemetery Chapel is designated for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: a distinctive and well-composed cemetery chapel, designed as a scaled-down parish church, which forms the focal point in the landscape
* Interior: the interior is little altered and retains most of its original fittings and some attractive late-Victorian glass; the hammer-beam roof is an elaborate feature in a cemetery chapel

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

508163

Legacy System:

LBS

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