Chapel Lodge

Reasons for Designation

Chapel Lodge, built around 1897 by EJ Shrewsbury for the Maidenhead Cemetery Company, is recommended for designation for the following principal reasons: * Architectural merit: a picturesque ensemble by a leading local architect, showing vigorous massing and a high quality of external detail; * Planning interest: an unusual and successful attempt to combine cemetery lodge and chapel within a single building.

Details

27/0/10011 ALL SAINTS AVENUE 02-AUG-10 81 Chapel Lodge

II Cemetery lodge and chapel, c.1897, by EJ Shrewsbury.

MATERIALS: Lodge of red brick and Bath stone; chapel of red brick and timber; clay tile roof.

PLAN: Main body of lodge building is a three-storey tower, approximately square on plan, with one room on each floor. Octagonal corner turret to north-east with entrance lobby on ground floor and winding stair above; two-storey extension to north containing kitchen on ground floor with bedroom and bathroom above. Chapel to south, with connecting door to ground floor of tower, is a single-cell cruciform structure with large double doors to east and west. Flat-roofed toilet block extension to south is not of special interest.

EXTERIOR: Lodge tower forms the central and dominant element of the complex: three brick storeys with stone quoins above a two-stage stone plinth; string-courses - double between ground and first floors, single above - mark the storey divisions; moulded stone cornice beneath pyramidal tiled roof with lead finial. Each floor has two-light Gothic window to front (east) and rear; those on lower two floors are larger and have hood-moulds; smaller top-floor window projects through eaves to form a gabled half-dormer. Diamond-paned leaded glazing, some of it replaced with modern glass. Tall ridged and corbelled stack to south wall; narrow embattled terrace to north. Octagonal turret to north-east corner with boarded entrance door set in Gothic arch, and small lancet windows lighting stairs and forming a lantern in ashlar-faced top stage. Two-storey hipped-roof extension to north, with square-headed windows of one, two and three lights, some with mullions removed.

Single-storey chapel to south is of brick and white-painted timber, with much carved woodwork and patterned leaded glazing. Timber-framed central cross-wing has double doors to front and rear with stepped lancet lights beneath four-centred arch with carved spandrels, above which are six small quatrefoil windows in moulded surrounds; herringbone brickwork in gable with timber cross superimposed; eaves with elaborately-carved barge-boards. Lower flanking wings have three-light square-headed windows with timber mullions.

INTERIORS: Very simple throughout. In lodge, plain panelled doors to rooms and cupboards, some now missing. Small ornamental fireplaces in upper floors of tower, replaced on ground floor. Plain timber balustrade to second-floor landing. Chapel has open timber roof, polychromatic tiled floor and fitted bench against end wall.

HISTORY: Unlike most towns of any size, the borough of Maidenhead did not establish a municipal cemetery in the wake of the Burial Acts of the 1850s, and in 1888 a private concern, the Maidenhead Cemetery Company, acquired land on the outer fringe of the town at Boyne Hill for a subscription-based cemetery, later known as All Saints after the nearby church. Accommodation for a resident caretaker was soon required, and the local architect EJ Shrewsbury was commissioned to design a building at the entrance to the site that would serve as caretaker's cottage, gatehouse and mortuary chapel. This building, with an extension to the north, was complete by 1897. During the 1950s the site passed to the Borough Council, but was superseded as a place of burial by the newer cemetery at Braywick. The lodge and chapel were sold to a private owner in 2010.

Edward James Shrewsbury (1852-1924) began in practice at Maidenhead in 1875 and went on to become the town's leading architect of the late C19 and early C20. Among his works are the Jubilee clock tower on Station Approach (1901), the former Technical School on Marlow Road (1896), and the churches of St Peter, Furze Platt (1897) and St John, Littlewick Green (1893). Among his pupils was the renowned Arts and Crafts architect and designer Henry Wilson.

SOURCES: Geoffrey Tyack, Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Berkshire (2010), p371. RIBA Directory of British Architects 1834-1914 (2001), p.601. Smith's Postal Directory of Maidenhead, Great Marlow etc (1897).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Chapel Lodge is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Architectural merit: a picturesque ensemble by a notable local architect, showing vigorous massing and a high quality of external detail; * Planning interest: an unusual and successful attempt to combine cemetery lodge and chapel within a single building.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

508344

Legacy System:

LBS

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