Bushey Cemetery

The cemetery buildings form a deliberately modest composition, and the chapels’ rammed-earth structures were chosen for their simultaneously monumental and poetic qualities.

The assembled structures are arranged to serve the Jewish burial narrative. There is a simple timber reception building and porte-cochère, set at an angle to leave an ancient oak undisturbed; a few metres away, a continuous, larch glulam colonnade runs past the front of the two rammed-earth prayer halls, each with a smaller accompanying volume for Cohanim priests in the same material. 

A timber-built mortuary is at the north end and stands slightly separated from the chapels. The traditional Jewish separation of spiritual and secular territory is also evident in the gaps between the colonnade and the chapels, and between the chapels and the rooms for the Cohanim, who do not enter the chapels or come close to the coffins or graves. 

Waugh Thistleton had no previous knowledge of rammed-earth construction, and its client, United Synagogues, had to be convinced that the material was feasible. The engineer, Elliott Wood, identified an experienced stabilised rammed-earth specialist in Australia with a British-based associate, Bill Swaney.

Swaney built a demonstrably durable sample wall section using 500mm-thick rammed-earth blocks composed of sand, limestone, gravel, 5 per cent cement, and clay spoil from the swales-cum-ponds created at the two lowest and wettest edges of the site.

The physicality of the rammed-earth façades, which sit on a stepped concrete upstand, is engrossing. The faces of the individual blocks have subtly uneven surfaces and colourations, marked with filled-in formwork tie-holes and wavering chamfered vertical joints.

The halls, entered from the west through large Cor-ten doors, are lined with a timber-slatted cowl which stops about two-thirds of the way into the space and gives way to rammed-earth walls lit from full-width west-facing glazing in the stepped ceiling.

The trapezoidal plan of the green-roofed chapels produces two right-angled corners and one façade that is slightly angled in plan, and these façades face each other across the open-air prayer space. Atmospherically and spatially, the chapel interiors and the outdoor gathering place give the mourning and burial ceremony a memorable narrative.