Grade II* listed · Cemetery chapel · West Norwood, London

St Stephen’s Chapel, a Grade II* Greek Revival building among the monuments of West Norwood Cemetery, had been closed by subsidence. After structural repair, and guided by our own paint analysis of the earlier scheme, we redecorated the ceiling: stencilled ornament replicated from full-scale tracings and adjusted to the movement in the historic plaster, cornices hand-lined with signwriters’ brushes, and gold leaf laid to the stars and beam intersections, all from scaffolding under generator light in a chapel with no mains power. High on the ceiling we left a small hidden record of the restoration for the next generation of decorators to find.

Hand-lining the cornice with signwriters’ brushes.

Gilded stars and rosettes within the Greek-key coffers.