I'm not sure from the group rules if I'm allowed to ask here about historical architecture, or if I should post in a different group. If I should post somewhere else I will.
There's a building I found on an abandoned farm that looks a little out of place. I think it might have been a chapel, but it's a square building, maybe 16/20 square meters, and has a door either side so you could walk in a straight line from one door and go out the other, which I've not seen before.
The thing that made it look like a chapel was it had quite elaborate windows, tiled floor and some sort of carved wooden molding that went around the top of the walls. The rest of the farm buildings had nothing like this. The farm was part of a large estate built in the 16th century, and the farm provided the main house with food. I can well imagine there would be a private chapel for the main house, I've seen that on another estate in the area... but other the other estate, the chapel was separate from the house and farm, and this one is smack bang next to the farm, and not near to the main house. Was it maybe so the farm workers could quickly worship, and then get back to work? Or was it something else entirely, like a milking parlor or a place to conduct business between the farm and the estate?
I have a few photos here (interior), here (exterior), and here (interior details) but they're not that good, sorry! I looked at historical ordnance survey maps and can't see a chapel marked on there.
Would be grateful to hear any theories, thank you!
It doesn't really seem to have a most of the features I'd expect to see in a chapel; It looks to me like what you've got there is a summer house.
Summer houses are a relatively common addition to estates around England from the early 18th Century onwards, especially once the trend for artfully 'wild' landscape gardens replaces the previous taste for formal gardens which had endured since the Medieval period. Seen most emphatically in the work of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, who designed over 170 estates around the country, 'landscape' gardens were controversial but fashionable and involved lots of landscaping and engineering to provide carefully crafted vistas designed to look as 'natural' as possible. Regimented flower beds, herb gardens and deer parks gave way to rolling vistas, ornamental lakes and artificially idyllic riverbanks, while planted forests and artificial hills hid 'unsightly' views like cities, or the homes of poor people. Indeed, the major medieval village of Milton Abbas in Dorset was largely demolished and rebuilt so as to hide it from the views from the newly-landscaped nearby estate.
Of course, such extensive effort is all for naught if you can't actually see your expensive new view, especially given that many houses were built with the aesthetic of the now-removed formal gardens in mind. Summer houses provided a (relatively) cheap way for landowners to enjoy and show off their new landscapes, impress guests, and also to find a modicum of isolation to do normal 'drawing room' or study activities away from the bustle of the main household. As detached buildings often distant or screened from the main house, they also allowed the landowners to indulge their architectural whims or embrace changing fashions without requiring expensive remodelling of fheir their actual house. This also meant that as households shrank, land was sold off and belts were tightened in the wake of WWI, these summer houses were often the first to be allowed to fall into disuse and disrepair, and hence why they're often forgotten about. This deceptively rustic summer house at Prior Park in Bath, for example, has only recently been restored after its remains were found during the clearance of overgrown hedges.
There are a number of prominent examples of surviving summer houses. This example from Newark Park in Gloucestershire shares certain aesthetic qualities with your example. At Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, a Palatial summer house is set into the remains of the Medieval curtain wall, overlooking the ruins of the original keep, destroyed in the Civil War and incorporated into new house's gardens as a pleasing ruin by Capability Brown. Tyntesfield near Bristol has a number of summer houses, one of which is this delightfully Neoclassical orangery.
