Two Angels, each with a pair of symbolic images in circles.. Compton Cemetery Chapel Mary Seton Fraser Tytler Watts and citizens of Compton. 1898. Photograph by Jacqueline Banerjee.
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. . . . 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. [Mee, p.80]
Reference
Arthur Mee, ed. The King's England: Surrey: London's Southern Neighbour. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938.
Last modified 2 December 2011