The mausoleum is square with a low-pitched slate roof. It formerly had plain acroteria at all four corners and pediment-shaped parapets, but only two of the latter and three acroteria remain. It stands facing the Independent Chapel, fenced off from the rest of the graveyard by iron railings with stone obelisks at the two front corners, while the back of the building is close to the graveyard wall. As the door and windows are now protected with metal sheeting they cannot be seen, but the list description, written in 1974, says it then had a plain wooden door with freestanding urns to either side (now gone) and shuttered windows.
Not known
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Grade II (England and Wales)
1780
Samuel Walker (1715-1782) and his younger brothers, Aaron and Jonathan, founded the largest and most successful ironworks in Rotherham. Samuel was exceptionally gifted; as a boy he made “sun-dials and other things which shewed genius” and, despite having few means of support after the death of his parents when he was only thirteen, he managed to gain enough education to start a school. In 1741 he and Aaron built a foundry in their hometown of Grenoside before moving on to Rotherham five years later. They were soon manufacturing “cannon of the largest calibre and almost all other cast-iron articles”. Later, their firm cast the bridges at Sunderland and Yarm and, finally, Southwark in London. Besides the family house, Masbrough Hall, Samuel Walker also built the Masbrough Independent Chapel and mausoleum where, according to Guest, he and his wife often sat “to read the Word of God and meditate on the world to come”. In his will he left provision that the free school he had founded and maintained during his lifetime should continue to exist “as long as it shall be of use to the neighbourhood”.
Conservation works were carried out to the mausoleum by the Friends of the Walker Mausoleum c.2006 to include essential repairs to the roof and the re-pointing of open joints at high level. Boundary railings were recorded to be in poor condition in 2002.
After two disastrous fires in 2012 the adjacent chapel was demolished and all the internal memorials lost for ever.
The surrounding graveyard is overgrown and unkempt. Neglected and plagued by antisocial behaviour the future of the site and historic context of the mausoleum is unclear.
BoE: Yorks West Riding (1967), 422;
J Guest, Relics and Records of Men and Manufactures at or in the Neighbourhood of Rotherham (1865).
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Please note: The location information below is approximate - we are in the process of improving the accuracy.
Independent Chapel (in the graveyard)
Chapel Walk
Rotherham
South Yorkshire
S60 1EP
England