St Olaf’s Chapel, Pownall Hall, Wilmslow

Built in 1888 and attributed to Ball and Elce because of their contemporaneous work on Pownall Hall and the Dower House. Henry Boddington dedicated the chapel to St Olaf, the Norwegian king who brought Christianity to the Vikings. Into the fabric of the building were incorporated various sculptured stones he had collected from local churches (including the tower of St Bartholomew's Wilmslow at the time it was being renovated), and he asked the sculptor John Jarvis Millson to construct a stone frieze showing Olaf's battles and death. A description and interior and exterior drawings of the chapel by T Raffles Davison were featured in an article on Pownall Hall in The Art Journal. The chapel was vandalised in the late 1940s and is now derelict – all that remains are the foundations. [RF]

Reference: The Art Journal 1891, p355

Close by the Chapel remains is a large boulder with the inscription ‘The Oak Tree near this stone was grown by Henry Boddington, JP of Pownall Hall, an ardent and original Director of Manchester Ship Canal 1885 – 1892 who carried home the first sod cut by Lord Egerton at Eastham in 1889 and planted an acorn in it’.  Boddington’s will stated that his ashes should be scattered about the roots of the Ship Canal Oak (he died in 1925). The Boddingtons left Pownall Hall after experiencing financial difficulties in 1891, although Henry Boddington III (qv)was resident at the Dower House in 1908