22338

 

II  

Designated  

14/09/1999  

14/09/1999  

Former Nonconformist Chapel at St Woolos Cemetery  

 

Newport  

Allt-yr-Yn  

 

St Woolos  

329679  

187477  

N  

St Woolos Cemetery is located along the north side of Bassaleg Road. The Nonconformist Chapel is situated some 50 metres NW of the main entrance gate.  

Religious, Ritual and Funerary  

 

The site was purchased by the Newport Burial Committee from Lord Tredegar in February 1854, the first burial being on 18th July of that year. The competition to design the Nonconformist and Anglican Chapels, together with the lodge and gates was won by Johnson and Purdue, architects of London, the buildings completed in November 1855. Towards the middle of the C19, growing urban populations coupled with increased cholera outbreaks meant that many parish churchyards became notoriously unsanitary. In 1850, the government passed the Metropolitan Burial Act, which was extended in 1853 to England and Wales. The purpose of the Acts, which spanned 1850-57 was to ensure that public cemeteries were laid out, bodies buried in a dignified fashion, and that all burials were recorded. The setting out of cemeteries with elaborate gates, lodges and chapels for various denominations had already been initiated by the London-based General Cemetery Company, a private enterprise, which laid out Kensal Green Cemetery 1831-37. Kensal Green received much publicity, fuelling the increasing sentimentality in commemorating the dead. Following the Act of 1853 came a boom in cemetery building, Newport being the first public cemetery in Wales. The use of contrasting styles for the Nonconformist and Anglican chapels is unusual among the early public cemeteries, reflecting the strength of Nonconformity in Newport. The Roman Catholics after some difficulty, gained an area on the north side of the cemetery by 1855, but it was not until c. 1880 that they built their own chapel, by which time the Jews had a small separate burial ground immediately to the north of the cemetery. The cemetery was extended to the SW by c. 1880, demarcated by the avenue of pine trees towards the W end of the site, and again in the early C20. The cemetery remains in use, the chapels are now used for storage.  

Romanesque style, contrasting with the Gothic Anglican Chapel. Construction of roughly squared red sandstone with Bathstone detail, including continuous sill-moulding. Clay tile roofs with alternating scalloped bands. Low clasp buttresses. Cruciform plan with circular crossing tower, rising from low square stage: single lights set high up, conical roof. Apsidal west end (ritual east end) with three single light windows. Short transepts with N and S triplet windows on shafts with simple scalloped caps, the centre light with sawtooth detail. Tiny paired lights above within the gables, similarly detailed. Transepts also have lancets to E and W elevations. Two-bay nave with single light window to N and S. E bay of nave consists of a large porte cochere. Round-arched E opening has half-columns with foliage capitals: sawtooth detail in arch. Hoodmoulding with short returns. Segmental N and S arches of two orders, dying into the imposts. E door to nave within tall round-arched opening, shafts with scalloped capitals. Entry has flattened arch, with unusual protruding carved roundels each side. Tympanum has carved detail with incised crucifix within central roundel. Paired boarded doors with elaborate upper branched iron hinges: also sawtooth-pattern iron margins to doors.  

Used for storage. Painted round-headed crossing arches on three-quarter columns with scalloped capitals. Arches of two orders: roll-mouldings with sawtooth detail above. Crossing has flat ceiling with large boarded oculus having simple radiating ribs. Thin collar-truss roof to nave, scissor-trusses in transepts. Black and white tiles to floor, laid diagonally.  

Listed as a prominent surviving feature of the first public cemetery in Wales.