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Eastern Cemetery Chapel
127-189 Ormond Road, GEELONG EAST VIC 3219 - Property No 217135

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Statement of Significance
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Statement of Significance

C Listed - Local Significance

EASTERN CEMETERY CHAPEL

STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE:

The Eastern Cemetery Chapel, 114 Ormond Road, East Geelong, has significance as an important legacy of the Roman Catholic Church section of the Eastern Cemetery, as a memorial to the Venerable Archdeacon, P.J. Slattery who died in 1903. The chapel also has significance as an intact example of an unusual Federation Eclectic Neo-Romanesque and Gothic style. Built in 1903 to a design by the Geelong architect W.A. Tombs, the chapel appears to be in good condition and of high integrity.

The Eastern Cemetery Chapel at 114 Ormond Road is architecturally significant at a LOCAL level. It demonstrates original design qualities of an unusual Federation Eclectic Neo-Romanesque and Gothic style. These qualities include the simple steeply pitched roof form, together with the parapeted gabled ends surmounted by cement rendered Celtic crosses and flanked by domed hexagonal pinnacles with blind cement rendered arcades and crowning finials. Other intact or appropriate qualities include the unpainted red brick wall construction, cement rendered dressing, galvanised corrugated steel roof cladding, single storey height, symmetrical composition, unpainted brick buttresses with cement rendered copings, pointed windows (including the windows in the gable ends) with cement rendered drip moulds above, scrolled cement rendered coping in the gable ends, cement rendered and pointed door opening with rectangular label moulds and double vertical boarded timber doors, quoinwork about the gable end windows and doorway, rendered bands and rectangular ventilators high in the gable ends, projecting brick plinths at the base walls, and the rectangular stone tablet with the memorial inscription to Archdeacon P.J. Slattery. The 18 monumentas forming a semi-circle nearby and representing other prelates also contribute to the significance of the place.

The Eastern Cemetery Chapel at 114 Ormond Road is historically significant at a LOCAL level. It is associated with the Roman Catholic section of the Eastern Cemetery, and particularly with Archdeacon P.J. Slattery, who died in 1903. The chapel is a memorial to Archdeacon Slattery, having been built soon after his death in 1903 to a design by W.A. Tombs, Geelong architect.

The Eastern Cemetery Chapel at 114 Ormond Road is socially significant at a LOCAL level. It is recognised and highly valued by sections of the Geelong community for religious reasons.

Overall, the Eastern Cemetery Chapel at 114 Ormond Road is of LOCAL significance.

REFERENCE:

The Geelong Advertiser, 23 June 1903, 29 June 1903, 22 June, 1904, Geelong Historical Records Centre.
The Eastern Cemetery, Classification Report, National Trust of Australia (Victoria), c. 1997.
Helen Lardner Conservation & Design, 'Eastern Cemetery Geelong Conservation Management Plan'.
The Pivot Tree, Magazine of the Geelong Family History Group, No.66, July 2000.

M. Lewis (ed.), Victorian Churches: their origins, their storey and their architecture', National Trust of Australia (Victoria), Melbourne, 1991.
D. Rowe, 'Architecture of Geelong 1860-1900', B. Arch thesis, Deakin University, 1991.

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