Church Heritage Record id19809

The chapel is a single-cell building of three bays with a small west bell-cote; it has a west doorway and a south-east doorway. It is orientated in reverse, and liturgical terms are used henceforth in this entry. There is a burial vault beneath the chapel.

The chapel was designed by Thomas Allom, and dates from 1855 From 1860. Allom was employed by the Fourth Earl of Canarvon to design the interiors of the house, some of which are in the Gothic style and some in William Kent's classical.

The chapel is built of flint with dressings of Bath stone. The roof is tiled.

The west front of the chapel faces a small expanse of gravel from which the churchyard is separated by a low balustrade in the French style with tall piers flanking a pair of intricate iron gates. The piers are surmounted by a pair of garlanded urns and both the gates and cartouches on the piers contain ciphers referring to the Earls of Carnarvon. The throw-over above the gates has a coronet at its summit. The low runs of balustrade each side of the gates are interrupted by small semi-circular recesses which look to have been intended for seats, and the suave neo-classical style of this approach accords strangely with the heavy, rather spiky thirteenth-century Gothic style of the chapel itself.

The chapel was built as a resting-place for the Carnarvon family and to provide shelter for the funeral services of those buried in its vault and in the churchyard outside. There is, therefore, no structural chancel, and the chief external feature is a large west doorway through which the coffins might be carried. The two-leaved door, with plate glass set in the minimal Gothic frame and four shields of arms in pands at the foot, is set within a two-centred arch carried on nook-shafts with stiff leaf capitals. The arch itself is enriched with stylised leaves and a roll-moulding. Framing this is a bold concave moulding, and then further out again are four orders of nook-shafts bearing a finely embellished series of moulded end foliated arches.

At the apex of the gable stands a bell-cote supported on corbels each side of a small lancet over the doorway. The plinth of the bell-cote forms the backgound for a finely-chiselled coat-of-arms of the Carnarvon family which seems to have been brought from elsewhere. The bell hangs in a lancet-shaped opening and at the outer corners at this level are small attached shafts. The gablet is enriched with small cross-gablets to the north and south and prominent gargoyles at each corner. The crowning feature is a wrought-iron weathervane.

The side walls are each divided into three bays by low buttresses. In each bay, save the eastern bay of the south wall, is a single lancet window, the place of the missing one being taken by a doorway which was presumably provided for the priest although there is no vestry. The east wall has three lancets arranged as a single feature within attached shafts and hoodmoulds. At the apex of this gable is a stone cross. The entrance of the vault beneath the chapel lies on the north side, where a steep and narrow flight of steps descends below an iron grating.

The interior is very plain, with none of the elaborately foliated and moulded carving which the outer aspect of the west doorway shows. The only enrichment round the heads of the doorways and windows is a series of incised texts drawn from I Corinthians xv. The pine roof is of simple construction with arch braces marking the bays which rest on the corbels carved as demi-figures of angels. The depth of the west wall (to accomodate the deep arch round the doorway) allows for small arched recesses each side of the doorway. The triple lancets in the east wall are internally, as externally, arranged as a single composition unified by attached shafts. Along the sill runs the inscription: THIS CHAPEL WAS BUILT FOR THE USE OF THE PARISH OF HIGHCLERE AND FOR THE COMFORT OF THOSE THAT MOURN BY HENRIETTAANNA COUNTESS OF CARNARVON A.D. 1855. The floor is paved with green tiles bearing the Carnarvon crest of a wyvern holding a hand in its mouth interspersed with yellow tiles bearing the cipher CC under a coronet. In the centre of the floor is a ledger slab of red marble with brass insets to the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon; it is said to cover an aperture through which coffins might be lowered into the vault beneath.