Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

A Grade I listed church of 13th and 14th-century origin, with a 15th-century clerestory. The building was repaired in 1744, and the chancel was rebuilt with comprehensive restoration carried out by Ewan Christian in 1863–4. It is constructed of ironstone ashlar with limestone dressings, featuring a Swithland slate roof to the chancel and lead roofs to the nave and aisles.

The church comprises a chancel, vestry, aisled nave, and west tower. The 1-bay chancel has a 3-light east window with cusped intersecting tracery and a 3-light south window with shafts to jambs and mullions bearing moulded and foliage capitals, with roll-moulded intersecting tracery; both windows have hood moulds and label stops. The 19th-century vestry to the north has a cued 1-light east window and a Caenstone-arded door.

The nave features a 4-window clerestory of 3-light windows with cinquefoil-headed lights and chamfered round arches or slightly pointed surrounds of grey sandstone. A rainwater head to the middle of the south side is inscribed "JOHN ALSAP / ROBERT HENTON / CHURCH WARDENS / 1744". The parapets are of plain stone-coped design.

The north aisle has 3-light windows to the east and west ends with cusped heads to lights and tracery forming three cusped pointed arches (renewed), and 2-light windows to the north with cusped Y tracery. All windows have hood moulds and label stops. The north door has been renewed with hollow-chamfered detailing, imposts, and hood mould.

The south aisle contains a fine set of windows dating to around 1300. All feature slender mullions and tracery with hood moulds and label stops. The east-end window has 4 lights with ogee-arched pointed trefoil heads, a larger many-moulded central mullion dividing the window in two (each half with a quatrefoiled circle above two trefoils to the head, and a sexfoiled circle to the main head). The west and south-east windows have 3 lights with cusped intersecting tracery. The window to the right of the south door displays multi-foiled reticulated tracery. The south door, though much renewed, retains 3 orders of shafts, a many-moulded head, and a hood mould with label stops.

The 3-stage tower has a cusped 1-light window to the bottom-stage west, a chamfered door to the south, and a similar window to the middle stage south. The bell chamber has 2-light openings with Y tracery and hood moulds. The tower features off-set angle buttresses, a plain stone-coped parapet with ball flower ornament to the base, and a gargoyle to the middle of the sides. A recessed spire has broaches and 3 tiers of lucarnes near the top, those at the lowest level being quatrefoiled.

Interior

The chancel contains a piscina with shafts, a blank pointed trefoil head, and nailhead ornament to the hood mould. The nave has 4-bay arcades with four attached demi-shafts with fillets to the central piers; the eastern piers have four main round attached shafts and four diagonal shafts of rectangular section, while the octagonal western piers have polygonal responds and moulded shafts with double-chamfered arches.

The south aisle houses a many-moulded piscina with a cusped head, a sedile, and an archway with continuous double sunk quadrant mouldings. The roof is a much-renewed Perpendicular tie-beam design with foliage and faces to the bosses.

The octagonal font stands on a broach-stopped octagonal stem. A set of 15th-century benches with poppyhead ends survives in the aisles. The church retains Royal Arms of George III in oil on canvas.

A Perpendicular-style rood screen forms part of a complete scheme of decoration to the chancel executed from around 1914 to 1920 as a memorial to the Beresford family. The screen has painted figurative decoration to its base and to the east side of the cove in relief. The wider decorative scheme includes tile floors to the chancel, choir seating, painted decoration and angels to the roof above the sanctuary, a painted frieze, and small Commandment and Lord's Prayer boards flanking the High Altar. Stained-glass windows to the east and south chancel windows, dating to 1914 and 1916, form part of this scheme, as does another stained-glass window by the same hand in the north-east aisle window of 1917.

Monuments include a brass of around 1480 depicting the lower half of a knight in armour with an indent for his wife, and a veined white marble wall monument to Sarah Anne Standley (died 1792). Successive members of the Beresford family served as rectors and patrons of the living for almost a century from the mid-19th century onwards.