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Summary

Description

1937-7, R Leslie Rollo. Art Deco style crematorium and halls of remembrance sited within Memorial Garden on ground falling to NW. Single and 2-storey with tall single stage chapel rising from centre and part raised basement, 3-bay, rectangular-plan. Bull-faced, squared and coursed, pink and grey granite; polished granite ashlar to porch and parapet coping. Band course. Some polished, recessed window jambs. Coped wallhead parapets to stepped roofline with flat roofs. Stone mullions.

NE (ENTRANCE) ELEVATION: symmetrical. Single storey bays with steps leading up to canted porch

at centre incorporating broad 2-leaf boarded timber door and flanking small lights to recessed face, outer bays each with bipartite window, access ramp at left. Taller set-back bay with 3 tall narrow windows grouped toward centre.

SW ELEVATION: asymmetrical elevation with dominant 4-light canted window (appearing as bowed bay) at recessed centre rising into further tower-like bay with widely spaced tripartite window. Lower projecting flanking bays, that to right with 3 small windows over 3 windows at raised basement, bay to left with 3 bipartite windows over projecting blank raised basement, further single window on right return.

NW AND SE ELEVATIONS: variety of elements to asymmetrically fenestrated side elevations, NW elevation incorporates raised basement with vehicular entrance.Predominantly multi-pane timber casement windows; lead cames to chapel windows; some metal and plastic windows to NW. Cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers.

INTERIOR: chapel with granite catafalque, raised reredos-style table, timber-screened organ loft and boarded timber dadoes and ceiling. Chapel flanked by memorial halls with timber casket shelves.

MEMORIAL GARDEN, BOUNDARY WALLS, GATEPIERS AND GATES: Memorial Garden with flat-coped, random rubble, stepped boundary walls; 2 pairs of flat-coped, square-plan, bull-faced ashlar gatepiers with quadrants and decorative 2-leaf metal-work gates with 'ABERDEEN CREMATORIUM' at top rail.

Statement of Special Interest

Kaimhill Funeral Home, which ceased operation as a crematorium in 1975, is a fine, little altered example of a 1930s modernist building. The typical horizontal emphasis and blocky massing in granite, rather than the more commonly seen whitewashed render, is skilfully elevated by utilisation of soaring verticals in the chapel windows.

Design similarities with Buckie Police Station, itself a fine example, emphasise the successful use of these verticals. Another fine building in Aberdeen by the architects R Leslie Rollo and D P Hall, is the Arts and Crafts style house at 46 Rubislaw Den North.

References

Bibliography

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