Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

Husbands Bosworth, Church Street

This is a parish church largely dating from the early 14th century, though it underwent extensive restoration in 1861 and 1867. The building is constructed of ironstone rubble with limestone dressings, and features a limestone ashlar tower with bands of ironstone.

The church comprises a west tower with spire, a nave with two aisles and clerestory, and a chancel. The early 14th-century tower is massively square and squat, rising through three stages with buttresses. It carries a 2-light Victorian west window with a late 14th-century niche above, featuring an ogee trefoil flanked by pinnacles with fleurons. A clock occupies the second stage, and the bell chamber is lit by paired reticulated lights supported by massive corbel heads to the hood mould. A corbel table and primitive pinnacles sit at the angles. The short broached spire is adorned with Y-traceried lucarnes. While the fabric appears medieval, many details are Victorian in character.

The south aisle is of ironstone rubble with a sillband and limestone parapet, buttressed and fitted with recut Victorian tracery in Decorated style. A porch dated 1746 is a short structure whose coped gable is dominated by a diagonally set sundial stone capped with a ball finial. The south vestry is constructed of well-coursed and squared ironstone, featuring a small blocked priests' door with a shallow segmental head and a blind lozenge recess above. Below the parapet is a stone dated 1683 inscribed with the initials SB and ET and decorative carving, marking the date of the vestry's addition.

The chancel appears to be an entirely Victorian reconstruction, built in ashlar with a plain tiled roof of steep pitch. It has 2-light windows to the south and a 3-light east window, all in Decorated style, with the east window displaying particularly fine cut tracery. A Victorian vestry stands to the north. The north aisle is of coursed and squared rubble with Victorian windows and a diminutive north porch balancing that to the south. Y-traceried clerestory lights run throughout.

The interior is large and spacious. The west tower arch has triple chamfering but does not align centrally with the nave. The nave arcade comprises four narrow bays, rebuilt in the 19th century in Decorated style with clustered shafts bearing heavy, luxuriant foliate capitals and double-chamfered arches. The arches are banded alternately in red and white ashlar, with large angels serving as label stops to the hood mould. The nave roof is of king post and angle strut construction, low pitched, with a ceiling painted with stencilled patterns on a white background. The chancel arch has semi-octagonal responds. A rood door survives on the south side. The chancel roof is steeply pitched with long curved principals. The south vestry features an arch, a Victorian piscina, and a stone quatrefoil frieze serving as a reredos.

Stained glass includes a window in the chancel south side dating from 1898, showing a florid representation of the Good Shepherd. The east window, in the style of Powell's workshop, features a geometric design with a central panel depicting the curing of the blind man and is undated. The south vestry contains a stained glass window of the Good Samaritan from 1865, and a series of windows in the south aisle from 1867 depicting miracles in gaudy colours.

The church furnishings largely date from the restoration period and include choir stalls with ornate brass candleholders, lecterns, a pulpit, altar rails, reredos panels, and encaustic floor tiles. The octagonal font, inscribed with panels, also dates from this period.

Monuments include various 19th-century memorials on the north aisle wall to members of the Mason family, and a memorial to Anna Smith who died in 1706, featuring an oval inscription plate superimposed on a scroll with a shield above and a skull below. A curious wood reliquary in Gothic style, dating from around 1918, stands in the north aisle with hollow pinnacles flanking an inscription. It contains two swords belonging to John Shenton (1612–1669) and Austin Kirk Shenton (1895–1918), with small panels below depicting landscapes associated with each man: John Shenton hiding in an oak tree, and what appears to be a First World War battlefield. Various 18th-century war memorials and a charity board occupy the tower, while further 18th- and 19th-century war memorials to the Hubbard la Sargue family stand in the south aisle.