Design for a Cemetery Gate for Dundee

Category

Library Item

Item no

43419

Title

Design for a cemetery gate for Dundee

Description

Image from James Grant's sketchbook, print numbered 204.

Date

1847

Type

Watercolour

Location

Edinburgh and Scottish Collection

James Grant has adopted the Perpendicular gothic style for this design for a cemetery gate in Dundee, dated 1846-7. This symmetrical gateway is highly ornamental with battlements, carved decoration, a grotesque face at the centre and shields. It has a thin octagonal angle-turret on either side of the entrance, surmounted by four visible pinnacles each. The buildings attached to the gateway, which have a simpler design, still have gothic windows and pinnacle decorations, as well as two additional roof gables facing forward.

Precedents and parallels for the architectural features of this work can be found in both medieval architecture and the gothic architecture of Grant's contemporaries in Scotland. The battlements with gaps in the stone, above the entrance and between the towers of Grant's gateway, are reminiscent of those on the tower of Merton College Chapel, Oxford, dating to around 1450. The tall octagon angle-turrets are similar to the octagon towers of St Paul's and St George's Church, Edinburgh, designed by Archibald Elliot and constructed between 1816 and 1818. Grant wrote of St Paul's and St George's: 'This handsome church - in its time the best example of Gothic erected in Edinburgh since the Reformation - was built from a design by Archibald Elliot, and does considerable credit to the taste and genius of that eminent architect.' Glasgow's Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral (also called St Andrew' Cathedral), designed by James Gillespie Graham and built in 1814-16, is similar to Grant's design in that its two central angle-turrets end with a flat level and with numerous projecting pinnacles above. Clearly Grant was well aware of both contemporary and historic British architecture he could take inspiration from.

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Related subjects

Architecture > Architectural features > Gates

Architecture > Architectural features > Gateways

Architecture > Architectural features > Pinnacles

Architecture > Architectural features > Stone carvings

Places > Scotland > Dundee

Religion > Religious facilities > Graveyards

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