Indoors and out the burial chapel is covered with mystic symbols. The great frieze running round the outside walls suggests in symbolical ways the idea of the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Scenes of angel faces look down, and there is a charming band of faces in the triple arch of the doorway. In the door itself is a wrought-iron cross copied from a gravestone at Iona. The remarkable interior with walls of plaster has silver roots of the Tree of Life round the walls below, and in the roof the Circle of Eternity. On the walls are four great groups of angels, all carrying symbols of such things as night and day, ebb and flow, growth and decay, life and death, good and evil, joy and sorrow, labour and rest, stability and change, the real and the ideal. The walls are covered with mystical work in ruby plaster and gilded; there are over a hundred medallions and winged cherubs. There is a picture of Mr Watts painted to express the idea of the All-Pervading, with suns and rolling systems in the lap of a great enfolding figure encompassed by the hands of Love. [Mee 80]
Exterior
- Chapel surrounded by trees and bushes
- Front of Chapel with Entrance
- Carved door with wrought iron decoration
- Exterior View of Wall
Interior
- Angels and calligraphic designs
- Two Angels, each with a pair of symbolic images
- Pillar, capital, and window
- Ceiling, Compton Cemetery Chapel
- Dedication
Memorial Cloisters
Discussion
Bibliography
Calvert, Hilary, and Louise Boreham, eds.>Mary Seton Watts and the Compton Pottery. London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2019.
Dixon, Roger, and Stefan Muthesius. Victorian Architecture. Rpt. London: Thames and Hudson, 1988.
Gould, Veronica Franklin. Mary Seton Watts (1849–1938): Unsung Heroine of the Art Nouveau. Over Wallop, England: Watts Gallery, 1998).
Arthur Mee, ed. The King's England: Surrey: London's Southern Neighbour. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938.
Rose, Lucy Ella. “Subversive Representations of Women and Death in Victorian Visual Culture: The ‘M/Other’ in the Art and Craft of George Frederic Watts and Mary Seton Watts.” Culture in Britain 17, no.1 (2016): 61-62.
_____. The Word in the Pattern: A Key to the Symbols on the Walls of the Chapel at Compton, Surrey. 2nd ed. London: The Astolat Press, 1905.
Last modified 27 February 2026