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4 unusual facts about Watts Mortuary Chapel


The All-Pervading

He also produced a variant on it as the altarpiece for the Watts Mortuary Chapel.

Watts Gallery

Compton's burial ground, nearby, houses Watts' remains and is dominated by the Italianate Watts Mortuary Chapel, designed by Mary Seton Watts.

Watts Mortuary Chapel

Essentially circular, from the outside it has the look of a Roman Italianate chapel; local villagers were invited to decorate the chapel under her guidance, resulting in an interior which is a merger of angels and Arthurian legend meets Edward Burne-Jones.

As a follower of the Home Arts and Industries Association, set up by Earl Brownlow in 1885 to encourage handicrafts among the lower classes, when Compton Parish Council created a new cemetery, local resident artist Mary Fraser-Tytler, the wife of Victorian era painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts, offered to design and build a new mortuary chapel.


Compton Potters' Arts Guild

The resultant Romanesque/Gothic revival exterior of the Watts Mortuary Chapel aroused such interest, that before work on the polychrome interior had started, Watts had set-up permanent Arts and Crafts communities in both Compton and her home-town of Aldourie, Scotland.

Louis Deuchars

However, his main employment there was as one of the four main workers assisting Mrs Watts, Mary Fraser Tytler, with her Watts Mortuary Chapel from 1895 to 1900.


see also