Church Of All Saints

The Church of All Saints is a parish church dating primarily to the 14th century, with significant earlier and later elements. The tower originates from the late 12th to early 13th century and was heightened in the 15th and 16th centuries. The church was considerably restored and partly rebuilt between 1865 and 1866. It is constructed of rubble stone with slate roofs and comprises a nave, aisles, a south porch, a tower at the east end of the south aisle, a chancel, and a south vestry.

The tower has three stages with slender clasping buttresses and a battlemented parapet. The 15th and 16th-century bell-chamber openings are two-light windows with cusped tracery, depressed arches, and carved heads to the stops and apices of the hoodmoulds. The east, west, and north windows of around 1200 on the middle stage each feature two slightly pointed lights in unmoulded semicircular arches. Central mullions take the form of octagonal piers with small capitals. The west window is blocked. A later two-light traceried window is located on the south side of the tower’s lower stage. The remainder of the church is in the Decorated style, displaying 19th-century traceried windows, offset buttresses, and a moulded plinth to the nave and south aisle. The chancel and vestry exhibit battlemented parapets. The west end has three steep gables, each with a three-light window; the nave also has a door in a moulded arch. The north aisle, originally of earlier 14th-century date than the rest of the church, features three two-light windows to the north, a three-light east window, and a small north door in a chamfered arch. The later 14th-century south aisle includes two and three-light windows and larger south doors in a completely restored moulded arch. The gabled south porch has gabled buttresses, a chamfered arch on semi-octagonal piers, and small cusped side lights. The chancel incorporates a two-light north window, a single cusped light to the south, and a large three-light east window. The vestry is of 19th and 20th-century origin with traceried windows and a south door.

Inside, the nave arcades have double-chamfered arches on octagonal piers. The five-bay north arcade has shorter arches and capitals of different designs compared to the taller three-bay south arcade. The church has 19th-century roofs, with a 19th-century clerestory of two-light traceried dormer windows in the nave. Both aisles contain a piscina; the south piscina has a cusped ogee arch. The tower has lancet windows to the lower and middle stages of the west wall and a heavy double-chamfered arch to the nave. A similar chancel arch accommodates a piscina and sedilia. The church contains a restored circular 12th-century font with a frieze of diagonally crossed squares, situated within a baptistery surrounded by traceried wooden screens dating to 1929. Further traceried wooden screens at the east end of the north aisle are heavily restored, incorporating some 15th and 16th-century fragments. Chancel screens of a similar date were brought from Colston Bassett, Nottinghamshire, in 1894. A good pulpit originating from 1613, carved with arcaded panels, was brought from Shefford, Berkshire, in 1897. A chair is dated 1W 1655. The church holds later 19th and 20th-century glass. Monuments include one to Mary Dawson (1779), featuring a large white marble urn with a flame finial and draped inscriptions upon a marble pedestal with commemorative panels. Other marble wall tablets are present, including one to Abigail Smith (1695).