Building record 1318800000 - CHAPEL HOUSE (ST CRISPIN'S), CHAPEL LANE

Grade II. Late C18 or early C19 flint rubble house with central tower. Single storey, old tiled roofs with red brick cornices. 4 casements and tall central pointed arched window with imposts, all in red brick dressings. Central gabled bay in front of taller gable and flanked by buttresses. Tower has pinnacles, bands, pointed arched openings. Lower group of cottages to south, similar to wings of main block, probably early C19 (B1).
Visible from Chapel Lane and prominent in the view down the lake, the 'Temple of St Crispin', a shoemaker's cottage disguised as as a sham chapel of flint with red brick dressings. At the W end a tower with obelisk finials. Repton removed its tall spire, which had been recommended to Dashwood by Captain J Moody. In the middle of the E front a steep-arched screen. Three-bay lower wings left and right. One of the chimneys nightmarishly with an outline of one zig and one zag (B2).
A miniature Gothic church (in fact a shoemaker's cottage hence its 'dedication' to the patron saint of cobblers) located alongside the Marlow Road (Chapel Lane) on the eastern boundary of the park. The tall tower and spire provided a further eye-catcher from the direction of the gardens and a suitably tranquil and rustic backdrop for Thomas Cook's second lake as shown in Daniell's picture of 1781. The style is an unlikely one for Revett, although the preliminary design appears to be in his hand. Repton's concerns regarding perspective led to the removal of the spire c1800. South of St Crispin's is an attached garden, which is undated (absent on both the Jolivet and Richardson maps) but likely to belong to a phase in the late 18th century. The garden is enclosed on the east by the present day park boundary wall, and on the west by a fence line immediately within which lies a low bank 3m wide at the base and Im high. This bank is the remains of a ruined wallwhich extended from the south-west corner of St Crispin's for a distance of 40m towards a building referred to by a number of authors as a boathouse (B4).