Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints, Glossop

Parish church with origins in the 14th century, largely rebuilt in 1837 by Matthew E Hadfield and JG Weightman. The nave was remodelled in 1913 by Charles Hadfield and a chancel was added in 1924 by M Hadfield. The building is constructed from coursed millstone grit and ashlar with ashlar dressings. The roofs are Welsh slate, with coped gables featuring kneelers.

The plan comprises a west tower with spire, a nave with aisles and south porch, and an ashlar banded chancel with a north chapel, south organ chamber and vestry.

The west tower has angle buttresses with set-offs and a square-headed west doorway with pointed arch surround. Above this is a three-light pointed arch window and clock. The belfry features single two-light bell openings under triangular hoodmoulds on each face. An octagonal broached spire rises above, decorated with two sets of gabled lucarnes.

The nave has five two-light square-headed clerestory windows to each side. The aisles each have five unusual two-light square-headed mullion windows with tracery and linked hoodmoulds, with cross gabled roofs visible behind the crenellated parapet. The south porch has a nodding ogee arch and pinnacles, with slightly curved side walls.

The north chapel features a double gable and two square-headed two-light tracery windows. The south organ chamber is plain with coped parapet. An attached lower vestry has buttresses with weathered cut-offs.

The chancel has two higher set square-headed two-light mullion windows with tracery to each side. The canted east wall has tall flanking buttresses with weathered coping and plinth. A deeply recessed round-headed opening with blind tracery panel below is visible, alongside a large circular window with tracery.

The interior reveals reused medieval masonry in the lower courses of the tower. A 14th-century arch has been re-erected in the north chapel. The tower arch has hollow chamfers and leads to a ringing chamber with an open work gallery.

The nave has five bay arcades with double chamfered arches, octagonal piers and crenellated capitals. Paired clerestory windows sit in deeply splayed openings, their inner arches supported on central octagonal shafts. The nave ceiling is very shallow and boarded, with transverse ribs on shaped wooden cornices. The aisles have cross-gabled boarded ceilings with shallow scissor braces.

The chancel arch is deeply moulded. The chancel itself has two full plain arches to the chapel, with the inner order dying into responds. Ogee-headed glazed openings serve the vestry, organ and gallery. The sanctuary features a shallow recess beyond the reredos, framed by a heavy moulded arch and traceried stone gallery. The four-bay roof has arched braces.

A priests' door projects into the north wall, and the chancel contains a trefoil-headed piscina and sedilia. Choir stalls with traceried front rails are among the fittings. An elaborate wooden polygonal pulpit features scenes in relief under traceried canopies and stands on a clustered marble shaft.

Some 19th-century glass has been reused from the earlier church. The tower contains an unusual mural monument to members of the Wood family, dated 1874. This features a white stone surround with segmental pedimented pilasters and seated figures framing a sarcophagus. An angel bearing a laurel crown stands above, with putti heads to the base corbels.