Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

This is a parish church of Grade I importance, largely built in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, though it contains work from several distinct building phases including a 16th-century clerestory and significant Victorian restoration. The structure is constructed of random granite rubble with limestone dressing, roofed in Welsh slate to the clerestory and chancel, and lead elsewhere.

The church comprises a west tower with spire, a nave with south aisle and clerestory, and a large chancel. The tower dates to the late 13th century and rises in four unequal stages with angle buttresses. The bell chamber features paired foiled lights. A plain parapet crowns the tower, above which rises a recessed spire decorated with one set of lucarnes and three tiers of carved heads at its angles, with broach details distinguishing the principal angles.

The south aisle is buttressed and lit by Victorian windows in Decorated style, mostly of two lights with plain or foiled tracery, though the easternmost window is later with three lights. A string course runs along the wall. The south doorway is set within a Victorian porch. The chancel windows are Victorian renewals, mostly of two lights with quatrefoils, the central window displaying tracery based on an ogee pattern. Below the string course is a small blocked opening, possibly a low side window. The 4-light east window features ogival tracery. The buttresses display trefoils beneath their coped heads. A Victorian vestry adjoins the north side.

The north wall of the nave is notably tall. Although the window tracery has been renewed, the fenestration pattern remains irregular, with each window in different style and at varying levels. The clerestory, a 16th-century addition, comprises squared 2-light openings with hollow chamfered architraves and mullions.

Internally, the south arcade contains five bays of 14th-century date. The slender octagonal shafts stand on square chamfered bases, with double chamfered arches and grotesque corbel heads but no hoodmoulds. The west tower arch is earlier, dating to the late 13th century, with a steeply triple chamfered profile. At ground floor level it is largely filled in and obscured by a gallery of approximately 1740, which is elegant woodwork supported on fluted columns with triglyph frieze and fluted pilasters. Its centrepiece features a marquetry panel with emblems of the sun. A doorway into the tower follows similar style with fluted shafts to the architrave.

The nave roof is a Victorian hammerbeam design, painted. The south aisle roof is supported by large grotesque corbels projecting southward from the arcade, carrying wall posts articulated with bases and abaci. These support cambered tie beams and collar purlins with moulded tie beams topped by enormous central bosses depicting heavy foliage or grotesque heads, one bearing a crown and another a green man. All woodwork including wall plates is painted in cheerful patterns of white, red, black and green with gilding. One tie beam is dated 1630 with initials W.H.I.D. and the name Rob Biggs.

The east wall of the aisle is blank but contains a blind recess divided into two unequal parts by a filleted shaft, with shallow ogival moulded heads to arches, finials, and corbels to the hoodmould. The chancel arch is triple chamfered and dies into responds without corbels. Above it is the impress of an early roofline.

The south side of the chancel contains an integral late 13th-century piscina and sedilia with clustered shafts and hollow chamfered mouldings. The church holds various memorial tablets, including on the north wall a black marble tablet with gold detailing commemorating Loseby Ashby, undated but probably late 18th century, surmounted by a shield with heraldic emblems and flanked by foliate swags. On either side of the altar are memorial tablets apparently erected in the 19th century to members of families who died in the 18th century. Classical memorials in black marble commemorate Thomas Major and Edward Stokes and their families. On the south wall is a stone memorial to Shuckbrugh Ashby, died 1752, in classical marble idiom. The stained glass dates largely from the 1930s to 1950s. The font is early, possibly 12th century, with a plain round basin with slight rim moulding curving from a curved base. Royal arms hang above the south door.