Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

Parish church with a complex building history spanning from the 14th to 20th centuries. The church comprises a truncated cruciform plan with a three-bay aisled nave and clerestory, incorporating a south vestry and embraced west tower.

The 14th-century arcades and south wall were refaced in the 19th century. The tower dates from around 1400, with its lantern rebuilt in 1837. A mid-15th-century clerestory was added, and the chancel was demolished with the east end rebuilt around 1780 and remodelled in 1887. The north wall and west end were rebuilt in 1834, and the vestry was constructed in 1850–55 and enlarged in 1912. Ceilings were repainted in 1987. The east end rebuilding was undertaken by William Bellwood, with remodelling by Fisher and Hepper and carving by G C Milburn.

The church is built of magnesian limestone ashlar on a chamfered plinth of rubble stone. The 18th-century masonry is vertically tooled. Roofs are of asphalt and lead.

The exterior features an east end of chancel and transepts flanked by offset buttresses with gargoyles and crocketed pinnacles. The east window comprises three cinquefoiled lights with cusped reticulated tracery in a two-centred head, flanked by similar transept windows, all with moulded sillstrings. On the north side towards the west end stands an 18th-century panelled door with a two-centred head, incorporating a 12th-century closing ring fashioned as a dragon swallowing a human figure. The south side is buttressed with a projecting gabled vestry at the western end, featuring squat diagonal buttresses surmounted by gabled crocketed finials and board double doors on wrought-iron hinges. The vestry extension has square-headed windows of two and three cinquefoiled lights. North and vestry doorways are chamfered with coved hoodmoulds on corbel stops. The north side has five three-light windows and the south side four. The clerestory bays on both sides are articulated by pilaster buttresses with gargoyles, originally surmounted by crocketed pinnacles, with one remaining on the south side. Clerestory windows are square-headed with three cinquefoiled lights.

The two-stage west tower is surmounted by an octagonal lantern. The west window comprises five cinquefoiled lights beneath panel tracery in a two-centred head, flanked by offset buttresses. The north and south faces of the tower have small pointed doorways to aisle roofs with clock faces above each. Belfry openings on each face consist of three cinquefoiled louvred lights in flattened four-centred heads with hoodmoulds above the belfry string. The lantern is buttressed with crocketed pinnacles and gargoyles between tiered lights of twin cinquefoiled openings with panel tracery in two-centred heads. The parapet is composed of cinquefoiled openings beneath crocketed gablets. Aisle west windows are of three cinquefoiled lights. All window openings are hollow chamfered with coved return-stopped hoodmoulds, except the east window which has corbelheads. All except the west window feature reticulated tracery in the head. All parts of the church, including vestry, clerestory and tower, are encircled by a coved eaves string beneath embattled parapets, raked up over gables and aisle ends.

The interior features an east window set in the rebuilt former chancel arch. North and south arcades incorporate the original transept arches at the east end, springing from octagonal columns and responds with moulded capitals and bases. The westernmost arches die into tower piers. The nave arcades have a continuous hoodmould, with former transept arch hoodmoulds on 19th-century carved headstops. Arches springing from the arcade's easternmost columns and half-octagonal responds to north and south divide the transepts from the aisles. All arches are two-centred and double-chamfered. Tower arches are two-centred with three chamfered orders, dying into octagonal piers and half-octagonal responds. The south-west pier contains a tower stair door in a pointed chamfered opening. Twelfth-century masonry survives over the east window arch and tower arch. The 15th-century nave and chancel roof is panelled with moulded ribs and carved and painted bosses at intersections. Nineteenth-century aisle roofs are panelled to imitate the nave roof on half trusses filled with cusped ogee arches between vertical struts.

Fittings include a hexagonal pulpit on a tapered pedestal with cusped panel sides between multi-tiered colonnettes ornamented with jewel carvings and grotesques, with a sounding board capped by voluted panels carved with winged cherub heads. Both are inscribed with texts, the sounding board dated 1634. An oak lectern on a square pedestal is buttressed between crocketed canopied niches housing late 19th-century carvings of the Evangelists (from St Crux). A fine early 20th-century reredos of marble, alabaster and oak is present. Three Mayoral Boards include one painted with cyphers for William III and George II, 1696 and 1736, incorporating a mace bracket, and two others from St Crux: one with a William and Mary cypher, the other painted with the Royal Arms and City of York Arms alongside a William and Mary cypher. Three Benefaction Boards are also present. Two hatchments survive: one at the west end in a fluted frame with rosette paterae probably depicting George III, and another over the vestry door from St Crux dated 1688.

Monuments and brasses include a coped grave cover with interlace carving and dragons at each corner in the north aisle; a marble tablet to Sergeant Major J Polety, died 1829, by Plows, with an added tablet to his brother Charles, died 1838; a tablet to Tate Wilkinson, died 1803, and Jane his wife, died 1826, by Taylor; a brass to Robert Crathorn, Knight, died 1482; a framed brass to Robert Askwith, died 1579, from St Crux; and an inscription plate to Roger de Moreton, died 1382, and Isabella his wife, died 1412, from St Saviour's. In the south aisle are a pedimented oval tablet to Ursula Wyvill, died 1790, and her husband and daughter; and marble sarcophagus tablets to James Saunders, Lord Mayor in 1818, died 1824, and Robert Bishopricke, Surgeon, died 1814, by M Taylor. A stone tablet to Henry Richards, died 1783, is located at the tower's south-east pier, and a steel plate engraved and enamelled to Stephen Jalland, killed at Gallipoli in 1915, is at the chancel's north-west pier.

The west window contains 14th-century glass removed from St Saviour's church, while other glass is 19th-century work by Kempe. Fittings from St Crux and St Saviour, St Saviourgate were transferred when St Crux was demolished in 1887–88 and St Saviour was declared redundant in 1969.