Beauty in Nature

The Fraser Mortuary Chapel, Arbroath, Angus In the care of Angus Council In the second of two articles on the Scottish revival architecture of Patrick Allan-Fraser in Arbroath, John Goodall looks at the extravagant mortuary chapel he designed for the town cemetery

- John Goodall

AS did so many Victorian towns and cities, Arbroath struggled to find space for its dead. It was to address this problem that a new graveyard—the prosaically named Arbroath Western Cemetery—was laid out on the outskirts of the town in 1867. When Elizabeth Allan-Fraser, heiress of nearby Hospitalfield, died six years later, on November 23, 1873, it offered a relatively unconstrained site for her mourning husband, Patrick—a painter, architect and benefactor of the Arts whose remarkable life was described last week—to create a very unusual monument and resting place for her, her parents and himself.

Allan-Fraser was firmly of the opinion that architecture should be functional. That probably made him reluctant simply to erect a grand funerary monument. Instead, over a period of nine years, from 1875 to 1884, he designed and constructed one of the most splendid mortuary chapels in Britain It was conceived as the architectural centrepiece of the new cemetery and intended to be suitable for use in the funeral services of the dead of all Christian denominations. Incorporated within it are mausolea for two pairs of tombs, one for his wife’s parents and the other for himself and his wife.

From the exterior, the Fraser Mortuary Chapel forms a highly eclectic essay in the Scots Baronial style, an idiom that—inspired by the novels of Walter Scott—Allan-Fraser had already fulsomely explored over the previous 30 years in his architecture at both Hospitalfield and his shooting lodge at Blackcraig Castle in Perthshire. The chapel is also very thoughtfully designed, with detailing that expresses its dual character as a monument and building of religious purpose.