Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

This parish church has origins in the 12th century, though its external appearance is largely 15th century, and it underwent substantial restoration in 1858 by Sir George Gilbert Scott. The building is constructed of coursed ironstone rubble with limestone dressings, and features leaded roofs, with plain tiles to the chancel.

The church comprises a west tower and spire, a nave with two aisles and a low clerestory, a chancel, and two flanking chapels. The 15th-century tower rises in three stages with pilaster buttresses at its angles and paired lights with transoms in the bell chamber. An embattled parapet with large grotesque gargoyles grips the corners. Above this sits a recessed spire with two tiers of lucarnes.

The south aisle is buttressed and features a possibly 18th-century south porch with a round-headed arch and coped gable. The inner door has a heavy ogee arch beneath an outer hood mould and is probably 16th century in date. The windows throughout are Perpendicular in style, featuring grouped round-headed lights set beneath square hood moulds. The south chancel chapel and chancel are 13th to 14th century, though the three-light chancel east window is a Victorian restoration in Decorated style. The north aisle and chapel are buttressed with Perpendicular windows and a Victorian half-timbered porch. The inner door here is Victorian, but its hood mould appears to be medieval. Both aisles have limestone parapets.

The interior is low and dark. A tall double-chamfered west tower arch of the late 13th century is set in a squared embrasure. The nave comprises five bays. The north arcade is late 12th century, featuring cylindrical shafts with trumpet scalloped capitals and one of stiff leaf, with a wide splay up to the square abaci. The south arcade is slightly later, early 13th century, with clustered cylindrical shafts and double-chamfered round-headed arches. Outer hood moulds feature corbel heads. The low clerestory contains paired lights. The Victorian nave roof has cusped braces to the tie beam and traceried panels between posts above it.

A late 13th-century chancel arch, steep and double-chamfered, gives access to the chancel. Round-headed arches open to the north and south chapels. The chancel roof is vaulted in wood with ribs forming square panels and is painted as part of a comprehensive decorative scheme executed by Sir George Gilbert Scott. The walls are treated in broad decorative bands with stencilled flowers in the lower section, then a deep frieze containing mock ashlaring, angels, and quatrefoil medallions, above which runs a row of arcading. Stencilled flowers also adorn the voussoirs of the chapel arches. Over the east window is a full-scale painting of Christ in Majesty. The tower space is similarly painted, with the decorative scheme continuing through the richly tiled floors and furnishings, including a tall wood font canopy, a marbled pulpit, a low marble chancel screen, and the pews.

The north chancel chapel occupies part of the north arcade and contains 16th and 17th-century tombs. The older tomb contains two recumbent effigies, probably Elizabethan or Jacobean, propped on their elbows with the male figure above the female. Both are framed by an aedicule on a high predella, all of alabaster richly decorated with strapwork. On the predella are figures of children—four girls in low relief stiffly kneeling. Though without inscription, the coat of arms suggests this is the tomb of George Chambre and his wife of Hothorpe. A smaller tomb mounted on the south wall commemorates George Bathurst and his wife Elizabeth. She bore him 17 children, all depicted in low relief in the traditional manner beneath two busts in oval niches of the parents. A painted organ by Snetzler, dated 1754, is also located here. Stairs and a doorway to the roof loft remain visible.

In the south chapel stands a large monument of 1772 to G. Davies, a substantial piece with an angled broken pediment surmounting an urn on a pedestal, accompanied by a fulsome epitaph. In the south aisle is a tomb to the Reverend Slaughter Clark and Rachel his wife, by Hayward, dated 1772. The almost life-size marble figures show him standing while she reclines on an urn.

Stained glass includes several windows of approximately 1870 to 1890 in the north aisle and north chapel in Renaissance style, making liberal use of yellow in classical architectural settings around figures of saints. The chancel east window of 1858 is in medieval style, as are the saints in the clerestory windows, the west tower window, and the south chapel window of 1863. Further Renaissance-style glass in the south aisle is dated 1886 and 1889.

A 12th-century font of simple round basin form with a moulded rim remains beneath a Victorian cover.