Mortuary Chapel Steeple, Sale, UK
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 53° 25.124 W 002° 19.593
30U E 544756 N 5919063
This steeple stands above a porte-cochère which links two separate chapels in Sale Cemetery.
Waymark Code: WMQ639
Location: North West England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 12/27/2015
Views: 3
The cemetery was opened in the middle of the 19th Century after the Burials Act of 1852 – 1857 allowed Burial Boards to be set up either as separate bodies or as part of the Borough Councils. This was in response to rapid expansion of the population in cities during the Industrial Revolution. Local church graveyards could no longer cope with the growth in the number of the burials.
The cemetery is an Historic England Grade II Listed Building and the following extract gives details of the chapels and steeple.
"The Burial Board for the township of Sale was formed in c 1858 (Sale History Society pers comm, 2003). A plan for the layout of the proposed cemetery, together with designs for a linked pair of chapels and a lodge, were prepared in 1861 by architect William Wilson of Manchester (Plan, 1861). In the same year the Burial Board entered into a contract for work to the chapels and lodge with Luke Winstanley of Sale who subcontracted the masons' work to Messrs Watson and Dickinson (Contracts, 1861). The main contract stated that all work was to be in accordance with the plan and drawings prepared by William Wilson with contract administration by the Board's surveyor. Home Office approval of the cemetery plan was given on 8 August 1862 and the cemetery was formally opened on 29 August 1862. The cemetery chapels remain, but are now (2003) no longer in use.
The two linked mortuary chapels (listed grade II) are sited at the head of an axial approach drive c 120m north-east of the principal entrance, with the Nonconformist chapel to the north-west and the Church of England chapel to the south-east."
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The chapel is also an Heritage England Grade II Listed Building with the following details.
"Cemetery Chapels. .c 1865. By Robert McBeath of Sale, architect, and Luke Winstanley, of Sale, Builder for the Sale Burial Board. Coursed thin sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings, coped gables with cross finials and a Welsh slate roof covering, laid in decorative bands . PLAN : H-plan complex with tower and spire rising from central archway , and tall gabled flanking crosswings with linking lower ranges extending to from outer entrance porches. EXTERIOR: FRONT: Symmetrical composition with 2-stage square tower with stepped buttresses rising from central pointed - arched opening at the axis of the approaches to the chapel complex. The tower supports a slender octagonal spire with lucarnes and a finial. Single storeyed ranges extend from either side to link with taller 3-bay chapel crosswings with steep coped gables, each with low angle buttresses and wide gable with pointed-arched 4-light windows, now overboarded, with traceried heads below hood moulds with carved head stops Above, full-width pitched moulding, as if to weather lower attached range, with blind trefoil within apex. . Pointed lancets to side walls. Lower gabled porches to outer walls of chapels, the entrances beneath pointed-arched openings, and with inner doorways with double vertically-boarded doors with elaborate strap hinges. REAR : Lower rear single bay projections each with occulus, now overboarded. INTERIOR: Not inspected. HISTORY: The closure of overcrowded and unsanitary urban church cemeteries which posed serious public health problems in the mid-C19 led to the establishment of numerous burial boards charged with the provision and management of new cemeteries throughout England. The Sale Cemetery is an early manifestation of this movement. A little -altered mid-C19 cemetery chapel complex, in a Decorated Gothic Revival style, which forms the central feature of a planned burial ground landscape . This example is thought to be one of the earliest such developments which followed from the establishment of Burial Boards in urban areas where ecclesiastical churchyards were considered no longer suitable for internments."
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