Building record BSE 040 - Chapel of the Charnel

Early C14 chapel. Flint walls circa 8 feet high. W end rebuilt. Windows blocked. Walls, inside and out, covered with memorial tablets mostly first half of C19. Interior is a garden. Surrounded by C18 iron railings. Vaults are still used for burials. It stood in the graveyard attached to the Abbey (S1, S2).

The Chapel of the Charnel stands in the centre of the Great Churchyard, to the south of the west front of the abbey church in the monastic precinct (BSE 010). It was founded in 1301 by Abbot John de Norwold (AD 1279-1301), who appointed two chaplains to celebrate masses in the chapel for the repose of the dead. (S3, S5)
By 1637 the chapel had become an alehouse, then a blacksmith’s shop, and finally, at the end of the 18th century, it was to become the private mausoleum of one John Spink, although his bank failed before the transaction could be completed (Hills 1865b; Morant 1873). Hills (1865b, 118) records that in 1844 the crypt of the Chapel of the Charnel was partly dug into, revealing a floor of barnack stone ‘covered two feet deep with bones’. Although technically scheduled as part of the designation of the wider abbey site in the early 20th century, the Chapel of the Charnel was also scheduled in its own right in the 1940s following a period of confusion over the status of the monument in response to proposals to remove the railings which surround it. (S5)

The ruins of the Chapel of The Charnel were also Grade 1 listed in 1952: Former Charnel House of the Abbey. Late C13. By John of Northwold (1279-1301). Rubble flint with stone dressings; now roofless. Numerous later memorial tablets have been set into the walls. The building is surrounded by cast-iron spearhead railings set on a low brick plinth wall. (S7)

August 1998 Site Visit: Rectangular E-W main cell with triangular E end. Max internal dimensions 17.95m x 6.70m. Flint rubble core, originally with ashlar external face. Three entrance openings on each N & S wall. Signs of large windows above. Part buried by at least 1m of soil (S4).

Depicted on Thomas Warren’s 1976 map of Bury st Edmunds, clearly shown among the grazing animals (S6)(S5).

Depicted by Suffolk artist John Kendall in his engraving A View of the Church Yard at St Edmunds Bury c.1170s (S7)(S5).