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Introduction

Location

History

Archaeology

Fittings

Glass

Organ

Bells

Clock

Stonework

Monuments

War Memorial

Churchyard

References

Pictures

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Listing Description

List of Incumbents

Welbeck
Chapel

Archaeology

The chapel was created, along with the Titchfield Library, from the old Riding School at Welbeck, abandoned when the fifth duke built a new Riding School at some distance from the house.

The style was a free mix of elements of English seventeenth century architecture and the Arts & Crafts style with just a hint of the Art Nouveau, and seems to have been chosen to blend with the existing buildings at Welbeck. The style was an early, rich and symbolist form of the Art Nouveau still strongly linked to the Arts & Crafts Movement, and one used almost exclusively in England for the design of ecclesiastical buildings. It has strong similarities to Sedding’s Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, designed in 1885. The chapel fittings are similar to those designed by Wilson for St Bartholomew’s, Ann Street, Brighton. He designed St Bartholomew’s immediately after he completed work at Welbeck. It was probably the case that the basic form and design of the alterations were due to Sedding, but that much of the detailed interior design work was the responsibility of Wilson.

Sedding’s task was to convert the Old Riding School building. This is a vast room, and Sedding created a completely new chapel and library which he linked directly to the north front of the main Abbey with a dramatic curved corridor. He added a staircase to the east end of the Old Riding School, which led the visitor over a carriage arch and along an enormous corridor to a lobby, and then down another staircase to bring the visitor out at the north entrance to the main house.

The chapel itself is arranged like an 18th century church with full height columns supporting flat entablatures and a barrel vaulted plaster ceiling over the nave. It is encrusted with fine fittings, creating a sumptuous, almost Byzantine atmosphere. It has a tunnel-vault on bulgy Ionic columns of pink marble. There is also much dark marble and some excellent bronze work.

The black and white chequered marble floor, the coloured marble altar-rail, the high pink/grey marble columns with their elaborate coloured marble entablature combine with the polished woodwork of the pews, choir stalls and panelling to produce one of the finest and most complete country house chapels of the late-Victorian era.