Summary
Mortuary chapel built between 1878 and 1879 and opened in 1880 for the cemetery associated with Somerset and Bath County Asylum. The chapel's design is attributed to the surveyor Edwin Hippisley, based on preliminary plans by County Surveyor, Arthur Whitehead. The gate piers at the entrance to the cemetery were built in about 1875.
Somerset and Bath County Asylum was built in response to the Lunacy Act (1845). The Act made it compulsory for counties to erect ‘pauper lunatic asylums’. It is recognised that the term ‘lunatic’ is an antiquated term that is offensive, and is therefore only used here in terms of historic names of buildings and legislation.
Reasons for Designation
The late-C19 mortuary chapel at Mendip Hospital Cemetery in Wells, Somerset is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Historic interest:
* for the unusual provision of a mortuary chapel associated with a detached asylum cemetery which demonstrates the high level of care taken to provide the dignified burial of the asylum’s dead.
Architectural interest:
* as the principal building within the asylum cemetery designed in an accomplished Gothic Revival style.
Group value:
* with the Grade-II registered Mendip Hospital Cemetery;
* with the former Mendip Hospital (Somerset and Bath County Asylum) which along with its chapel and south lodge are listed at Grade II;
* with the Grade-I listed Wells Cathedral, which provides an important designed view from the west porch of the chapel.
History
In 1845 the Lunacy Act made it compulsory for counties to make provision for their poor members of society suffering with a psychiatric condition, and between 1845 and 1914, a network of about 120 ‘pauper lunatic asylums’ were built across the country. These purpose-built asylums were usually placed in a rural setting, with the grounds being laid out in the style of a modified country house estate with extensive areas provided for therapeutic and recreational use. Some asylums included a burial ground within the asylum grounds, whilst others relied on local parish churches or cemeteries. Of the 14 asylums that were built in the south-west of England, only four were provided with their own cemeteries, and Mendip Hospital Cemetery is the only one of these that was detached from the main asylum site.
Somerset and Bath County Asylum (Grade II, List entry number 1345148), located 850m to the north-east of the cemetery, was designed by the architects George Gilbert Scott and William Bonython Moffatt, and built between 1845 and 1847. Initially, deceased patients were buried in the churchyard of the Church of St John Evangelist (Grade II, List entry number 1178007), located about 1km to the north-east of the asylum in East Horrington. Subsequently, Wells General Cemetery, which opened in 1856, provided space for the burial of paupers from the city of Wells, surrounding parishes, and the asylum. In 1872, when it became clear that Wells General Cemetery could no longer accommodate the burial of the asylum’s dead, the Board of Visitors commissioned the County Surveyor, Arthur Whitehead, to draw up preliminary plans and estimates for a cemetery for the specific use of the asylum. In October the following year, a three-acre site to the south of Bath Road was purchased at a cost of £400. Whitehead’s plan formed the basis of the subsequent construction of the cemetery by the Wells surveyor Edwin Hippisley. The plan, entitled ‘County Lunatic Asylum – Plan of New Cemetery’, shows a two-acre cemetery site measuring 100m north to south and 70m west to east with a grid layout of rectangular burial plots separated by straight paths, a mortuary chapel, gate piers, and enclosing boundary walls. The detached asylum cemetery was conveyed to the Board of Visitors in 1874 and was consecrated by the Bishop of Bath and Wells on 27 January 1874, with the first internment on the 15th May 1874. The boundary walls were completed in April 1875, and the mortuary chapel built between 1878 and 1879 and was first used on the 27 February 1880. Its design is attributed to Edwin Hippisley, based on the original plans by Whitehead. The original layout of the cemetery is shown on the 1885 Ordnance Survey map, and includes the mortuary chapel.
The chapel, although not constructed until after the cemetery opened, was always intended as part of the original scheme and is integral to the overall design and layout of the cemetery. Located in an elevated position to the north side of cemetery it forms a visual focus, enhanced by its alignment on a west to east axis in line with the entrance gate piers, with an axial view of Wells Cathedral (Grade I, List Entry number 1382901) to the west. Its conspicuous positioning to the north side of the cemetery, above the burial plots enabling it to be viewed from all of the paths is arguably influenced by the ideas of John Claudius Loudon as set out in his publication, ‘On the Laying Out, Planting and Managing of Cemeteries’ (1843). Loudon was an influential horticultural writer and a leading proponent of cemetery improvement, aiming to meet the sanitary requirements from burial space whilst at the same time offering an attractive and instructive landscape of remembrance that included the chapel as a focal point within the layout. His influence is apparent in the design of numerous cemeteries from the 1850s onwards, including both Wells General Cemetery and the asylum cemetery. The design of the chapels in both cemeteries are similar and it is interesting to note that Hippisley was a member of both the Board of Visitors for the asylum and the Burial Board for Wells General Cemetery.
Details
Mortuary chapel built between 1878 and 1879 and opened in 1880 for the cemetery associated with Somerset and Bath County Asylum. The chapel's design is attributed to the surveyor Edwin Hippisley, based on preliminary plans by County Surveyor, Arthur Whitehead. The gate piers at the entrance to the cemetery were built in about 1875.
STYLE: Gothic Revival.
MATERIALS: constructed of squared white and red rubble sandstone laid in an irregular coursed pattern, with limestone ashlar dressings. The roof is covered in slate tiles with pierced red-clay ridge tiles.
PLAN: a single-cell plan with a projecting porch at the west end.
EXTERIOR: the chapel has steeply-pitched gable ends, and angle buttresses with offsets. To the west end is a gabled porch with a pointed-arch doorway, and an open trefoil to the centre of each side wall. To the west gable of the chapel is a wheel window of three quatrefoils. To the side (north and south) elevations are two lancet windows with cusped heads, divided by a buttress with offsets. The three-light east window is formed of three lancets with cusped heads. Each window has a hoodmould with red and white dressed-stone voussoirs above.
INTERIOR: the pointed-arch doorway has a pair of timber doors and is set within a segmental-arched ashlar doorframe. The interior has exposed stonework, a flagstone floor, dado-height matchboard panelling, and a scissor-braced roof. The raised east end, approached by stone steps to either side, has a geometric-patterned tiled floor. The upper lights of the east window, and the spandrels of the wheel window retain original blue and yellow stained glass.
