I recently got a rare opportunity to see around Mortonhall Crematorium in Edinburgh, one of Basil Spence’s best-resolved buildings. As a result, this instalment of the blog is a photo-essay on this Modernist intimation of mortality, sited near the Braid Hills. Strangely, architecture magazines often used to feature photo-essays – “Zodiac” was particularly good at powerful black and white images telling the story of a building, urban block or whole town – but the form has died out. Perhaps using a balance of words and pictures is an infraction these days, when images without an over-riding narrative are the norm …
Mortonhall Crematorium stands in a woodland hollow on the southern edge of Edinburgh, and is a approached along a tree-lined avenue off Howdenhall Road. The main elements of the building are a large 250-seat chapel, a smaller 50-seat chapel, a crematorium and service block linking the two, and a freestanding chapel of remembrance beyond. Externally all the buildings are clad in white calcined-flint aggregate concrete blocks laid to courses of varying heights, with doors and windows of red cedar which has been stained black. The roofs are clad in zinc.
Inside, Spence used a muted palette of fine-textured concrete, unpainted acoustic plaster and bronze. The tall south windows are glazed in yellow, amber, green, red. blue and purple glass, which transmits a wide gamut of colours onto the plain white internal walls. Outside, the perimeter of the buildings has been paved using grey granite setts, with the landscaping beyond in a simple mix of grass and forest trees: because Mortonhall was completed in 1967, the landscaping is now mature, and the crisply-detailed buildings sit very happily in their leafy context. Mortonhall has something of the timeless aspect which Lewerentz and Asplund achieved with their cemetery chapels.
The first image shows the main chapel, which hints at Utzon in its reticulated plan and stripped back detailing, as well as referencing Spence’s own work at Coventry Cathedral. The pews are arranged in echelons, and the southern facade fans out to gather in light at different times of the day. The second image is from the organ loft, with autumn sunshine streaming through the stained glass.
The business end. The cremators – machines built by Furnace Construction Ltd. of Manchester – run at 800 degrees and are triple-chambered in an effort to eliminate air pollution. Surprisingly, all the equipment is original, and has resisted the high temperatures for four decades thanks to being relatively high specification, and having been evidently maintained to a schedule.
The simple detailing and plain surfaces lend the chapel a transcending peacefulness, which Spence no doubt intended. Mortonhall arose from an era of sculptural modernism in and around Edinburgh – its contemporaries were Kininmonth & Paul’s Scottish Provident HQ in St Andrew’s Square; the Royal Commonwealth Pool by RMJM; and Peter Womersley’s Nuffield Heart Transplant Unit. Mortonhall is the least fussy, and most timeless, of these.
The abstraction of the stained glass works well to create atmosphere in the chapels – rather than taking on the allegorical role which it normally plays in pre-Modern Christian buildings. In fact, Mortonhall must be one of very few Scottish chapels not to have the Saltire – the cross of St Andrew – feature somewhere in its glazing. The tablets over the catafalque feature a crucifix, as well as the symbols of other faiths; in 1967, there was a large cross on a plinth beside the lectern.
I don’t feel there’s any need to critique Mortonhall, as it is easy to appreciate that this building which was designed to suit every sense of its function. The calm Modernism is a fitting backdrop for loss and grief in our Age – compared to say the High Gothic which was the Victorians’ funerary style. One is the product of a rational humanism, or a gentle pantheism; the other reflects the psychopomp of the later 19th century, with its elaborate ceremony and ritual. As a closing thought … Mortonhall was designed by the greatest religious architect of the late 20th century. In our increasingly agnostic times, who would we turn to for a building design which dignifies our departure from the world?
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