Patrick Allan-Fraser of Hospitalfield, Arbroath, had this mortuary chapel and mausoleum built as a memorial to his wife Elizabeth following her death in 1873.
I visited it with my wife Sian on Sunday 9th September 2018 as part of Doors Open Day Scotland.
It is an impossible building to describe in words, let alone any one word, however it seems to me to carry some of what I have come to consider as ‘Gothic’.
A whole Gothic world had come to grief:
To play this film please click here or on the image above.
The day before visiting, my daughter Rachel introduced me to Spotify, and on one of the songs on her playlists was ‘Fourth of July’ by Sufjan Stevens. This track somehow entered my mind as I walked through the doorway to Patrick Allan Fraser’s mausoleum.
We went on to visit Hospitalfield House, the Fraser family home (a clip is included in this film).
Hospitalfield House is a time capsule of the artisan Victorian and most wonderfully also of today: Patrick Allan Fraser and his wife had no children and they bequeathed Hospitalfield to be a centre for training in the Arts. It is lovely to consider that Hospitalfield has been home to new and emerging art for over a century.