It was primarily the work of a small design team consisting of George Collison II (acting as client for the cemetery founders, with a passion for Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston, and it is said, Beverley Minster which dominated the skyline in his ancestral town); William Hosking (architect and civil engineer with an interest in Egyptology, antiquities, and architectural writing and scholarship); the builder John Jay, and George Loddiges (botanical scientist and horticulturalist primarily concerned with the setting of Abney Park Chapel, including its nearby rosarium and a collection of American plants on the Chapel Lawn).

William Hosking, in discussion with George Collison II developed a plan to site the novel chapel at the very heart of Abney Park foregoing any positioning close to the main entrance.

Hosking considered this to be best suited to a steeple – it would need to be much higher than any other in the vicinity, surpassing that of the local parish church, to produce maximum effect.

William Hosking drafted and redrafted an increasingly elegant solution to this design problem, beginning from a fairly conventional, scaled-down version of an Anglican gothic minster as a convenient starting point.

At this date nonconformist clients did not commission the Gothic revival style, due to pressure to closely associate it with 'high church' uses, as was advocated by some early revivalist architects led by Augustus Welby Pugin.

The concept of introducing classical elements into a gothic design had previously used in England only on rare occasions, such as for the Little Castle at Bolsover in Derbyshire, built after the Reformation, from 1612.

It symbolised a connection with Romanesque-Gothic religious buildings of continental Europe, such as the monastic St. Procopius Basilica in Třebíč, Czech Republic, where Jewish and Christian cultures co-existed; now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

[citation needed] Near to the chapel with its splendid botanical rose windows George Loddiges laid out a special rosarium to bring attention to this rich and diverse plan family.

The final result was a chapel, complete with its unornamented yellow stock brick walls, a tall, eye-catching yet gracefully simple steeple, and simple botanically accurate rose windows, created a dramatic but tasteful and purposeful piece; one that epitomised its low gothic nondenominational function well, whilst establishing Abney Park as a local landmark visible from the thoroughfares of Church Street and the High Street, and from Woodberry Downs in the middle distance.

William Hosking mastered the brief admirably, providing them with a chapel building that achieved the company's objective remarkably well, both in its choice of materials and style of design.

[citation needed] The chapel's eventual design avoided the temptation towards eclectic over-adornment sometimes associated with excesses of romantic mediaevalism, for which the derogatory term Gothick can be used.

However, its purposeful 'turning away' from the commercial entrance to enable its most elegant facade to face a planned vista and walk in memory of Dr Watts, was important to capture the spirit of the park.

Although Dr Watts had been a lifelong religious Independent, he had been honoured in death by a memorial in the Anglican Westminster Abbey, and his hymns and scholarly teachings had become widely favoured by moderates of many denominations.

Hosking's critics emanated principally from groups such as the Cambridge 'Ecclesiologists' who were pursuing an Anglican revivalist agenda and favoured particular stylistic approaches and applications.

Even at the time of its completion, counterbalancing the critics were other 'arbiters of taste' who concluded that Hosking's cemetery design worked exceptionally well; notably John Loudon.

[citation needed] Moreover, upon completion of the Abney Park Chapel, William Hosking was offered the post of professor of Art and Construction at King's College, then an avowedly the Anglican establishment, and John Britton, who had co-authored one of Pugin's books promoting gothic revival architecture, was soon to work in partnership with William Hosking to devise a restoration scheme in Bristol for an Anglican church.

[citation needed] Today Hosking's novel chapel continues to merit acclaim as an outstandingly attractive architectural set piece of special importance amongst the Magnificent Seven London garden cemeteries of the time, and indeed throughout Europe.

Plans are being progressed by The Abney Park Cemetery Trust to re-open it and give access to the public and community groups once again along with an improved nature and landscape setting.