Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

This is a parish church built in 1858 by the architectural partnership of Mallinson & Healey of Bradford, with extensions added in 1874. The church is constructed of coursed sandstone with freestone dressings and a graded-slate roof.

The building follows an asymmetrical plan with an aisled nave containing five bays, a north porch, north transept, south transept with tower, and a lower chancel. North and east vestries adjoin the chancel.

The church is designed in the Free-Decorated Gothic Revival style. The aisles feature 3-light windows to north and south and 2-light windows to the west, with a clerestorey above containing cinquefoil windows under segmental heads. The nave has deep angle buttresses with a shallow lean-to added between them, and displays a 3-light west window. The north porch entrance has a continuous double chamfer.

The dominant feature is the four-stage south transept tower with diagonal buttresses and a gabled north-east stair turret with a blocked doorway beneath a shouldered lintel. The lower stage contains a triple cusped south window, the second stage a 2-light window, and the third stage small square-headed south and west windows. The upper stage is octagonal with 2-light windows facing the cardinal directions, surmounted by a stone spire with lucarnes. The north transept has a 3-light window. The chancel features a 4-light east window and 2-light north and south windows. The east vestry, built as a lean-to against the transept, has a 3-light east window with its roof concealed behind a parapet. An entrance in a projection wraps around the north-east angle of the chancel.

Inside, the first two bays of the nave have been partitioned off but retain their original architectural elements. The nave arcades rest on octagonal piers with double-chamfered arches, while chancel and transept arches spring from polygonal responds. Arches opening into the organ chamber at the base of the tower are steeply pointed. The nave roof features closely spaced rafters. The chancel has a 3-bay cusped arched-brace roof. The north transept, now subdivided into rooms, contains a plain arched-brace roof. Walls are plastered throughout. A raised dais at the west end of the chancel now accommodates the altar.

The 1886 font is of alabaster marble with a painted stone stem, accompanied by a tall wooden Gothic canopy now stored in the north transept. The chancel contains a painted freestone reredos with an arcade of cusped arches under crocketed gables on marble shafts. A memorial to John Henry Warneford (died 1899), the first incumbent, is set into the chancel south wall—a bust mounted in an eared and lugged marble architrave. Several stained-glass windows date from the 1860s, with a west window depicting Christ performing miracles dating from around 1885.

Most furnishings, including pews and pulpit, have been removed. Originally the organ occupied the north transept with a gallery beneath the tower. The vestries were added in 1874. Around 2000 the interior was substantially reordered to create a parish room, office, and service rooms at the west end of the nave.

The church serves as a major landmark at the south end of Halifax, overlooking the Calder Valley, and exemplifies how 19th-century churches were positioned to occupy commanding townscape locations during the period of industrial expansion.