Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints, Smedley Street, Matlock

Parish church built in 1883-84 by Thomas Henry Healey and his brother Francis, architects of Bradford. The west end was completed in 1958. The church was built to serve the growing resort town of Matlock, capitalising on the success of John Smedley's Hydro, which at its peak treated as many as 2,000 patients annually. The original ambition was to build a much larger church beginning at the east end, but the scheme proved over-ambitious and the nave was never extended to its full planned length.

The church is constructed of tooled gritstone in regular courses with freestone dressings and a graded-slate roof. It follows an Early-English style with very lofty proportions and comprises a short aisled nave of only 2 bays, a chancel of equal height, a south chapel, and a north organ chamber and vestry.

The exterior displays characteristic features of the period. The nave has 2-light plate-tracery clerestorey windows, while the aisles are lit by paired lancets. A trefoil-headed doorway with ringed nook shafts serves the south aisle. An additional half bay at the western end of the south aisle forms part of the 1958 west front, which incorporates an entrance vestibule and gallery. The west front itself presents a wide entrance arch with, set back behind a coped parapet, a polygonal apse containing simple paired gallery windows. The chancel is notably tall due to the fall in ground level and displays three lancets with a cusped circle above forming the east window, positioned very high in the wall. The chancel also has a 2-light clerestorey and on its south side a bracketed bellcote with louvres. The south chapel contains a 2-light plate-tracery east window, single and paired lancets in its south wall, and a west rose window. The north vestry has a hipped roof with square-headed windows; the organ chamber adjoins it with square-headed windows and a small quatrefoil north window.

The interior demonstrates considerable architectural ambition. The nave and chancel are of equal height and contain a hammerbeam roof spanning 2 and 3 bays respectively, supported on rich foliage corbels. The junction between nave and chancel is marked by triple shafts rising from the top of an arcade pier. The nave arcade consists of 2 bays with a round pier and roll-and-hollow mouldings in the arch; the west responds and east piers carry nailhead decoration. The chancel arcade comprises 2 bays with octagonal piers, capitals featuring nailhead decoration and square abaci, and stilted arches with open cusped circles in the spandrels; the east responds have foliage capitals and nook shafts. A shafted rere-arch frames the east window. The south chapel has a trussed-rafter roof, and all interior walls are of exposed freestone. The chancel floor is decorated with tiles; other floors, now carpeted, conceal the original construction, though pews are mounted on raised floorboards.

The principal interior features reflect the church's ambitions. The magnificent east window was designed by Edward Burne-Jones and executed by Morris & Co in 1905, depicting saints and prophets. A sequence of windows in the north aisle narrates the New Testament story from the Resurrection to Pentecost, created by Heaton Butler & Bayne around 1907. A more recent abstract window in the south chapel was designed by Sarah Burgess and Tony Sandles in 2005. The large square font bears an inscription and corner shafts; an equally impressive round freestone pulpit is decorated with cusped arches and features a column with detached shafts. Benches throughout have shaped ends with pierced roundels. The choir stalls feature shaped ends with panelled backs and frontals, with back tiers integral to canopied screens serving the south chapel and organ chamber, both incorporating doorways. The sanctuary contains Gothic panelling incorporating a priest's stall. The freestone reredos displays cusped arches on marble shafts framing a central high-relief crucifixion, with symbols of the Evangelists beneath outer arches. The south chapel has a panelled Gothic wooden reredos with a carved central figure of Christ beneath a canopy. A brass chancel screen on a freestone base is dated 1898.