A substantial stone chapel built in the Romanesque style. The barrel-vaulted interior is lined in brick and has a handsome black and white marble floor. There are three loculi in each of the three arched recesses on either side of the building. The circular window over the entrance, which once had stained glass by Thomas Baillie & Company of London, was re-glazed with modern decorative glass when the building was restored.
William Burn
Romanesque Revival
Grade II (England and Wales)
1869
The Packes were Leicestershire squires descended from a Lord Mayor of London who had bought the Prestwold estate in the mid seventeenth century. When Charles William Packe MP (1792-1860) inherited the family seat, Prestwold Hall, he employed the Scottish architect, William Burn, to extend and remodel the building in a romantic Italianate style. As Packe and his wife Kitty (1800-70) were childless, the estate was entailed on a younger brother with whom he was soon in dispute. As a result, he abandoned Prestwold and bought the Branksome Park estate where, in 1852, Burn built him another house, Branksome Tower. After her husband’s death in 1860, Kitty Packe employed Burn to build the mausoleum in the park. She and her husband were the only people buried there. Branksome Tower was demolished in 1973, but the park belongs to the Council and the mausoleum is still there.
Good. Restored by Poole Council in 1993 and open by appointment. Visited October, 2002.
BoE: Dorset (1972), 329;
BoE: Leicestershire (1984), 349; M Girouard, The Victorian Country House (1979) 138-142;
M Cross, Prestwold Hall to Branksome Tower (1993), Bournmouth Local Studies Publication, 17-20.
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To the rear of 23 Pinewood Rd
Branksome Park
Poole
Dorset
BH13 6JP
England