Parish Church Of All Hallows

Parish Church of All Hallows, Ordsall

This parish church comprises a 13th-century nave and chancel with a 15th-century tower, much rebuilt in 1876-7 by the prominent Nottingham architect T.C. Hine. The building is constructed of mixed ashlar and rock-faced stone, possibly a Midlands sandstone, with tiled roofs.

The church plan consists of a west tower, a nave with two aisles, a two-bay chancel, and a north-east vestry. The tower is short with three stages and diagonal buttresses, probably of 15th-century date though substantially refaced. Its upper parts were repaired after lightning damage in 1823, possibly by Richard Ingleman (designer of Ordsall Rectory in 1819 and working at St Michael, West Retford around 1822-4), and further renewed in 1877. The bell openings are of two lights with Perpendicular tracery. A plain west door is topped by a three-light window. The lean-to aisles are entirely of 1876-7, constructed of rock-faced pinkish stone with bands of creamy ashlar limestone, featuring square-headed three-light windows and tiled roofs without parapets. The prominent south porch has short attached columns with foliate capitals in the Early English style. The north aisle is similar but includes a plain ashlar vestry at its east end, probably relating to a faculty of 1936. The south wall of the chancel displays the most medieval stonework, with large irregularly sized ashlar blocks. Here, a three-light south window sits beneath a four-centred arch of late 15th or early 16th-century date, while the large Decorated east window is entirely of 1876-7. Hine's Victorian work unmistakably follows the forms of previous construction, except in raising the chancel roof high above that of the nave to accommodate the prominent east window.

Internally, the tall moulded tower arch is probably 15th-century, as is the four-centred internal doorway to the tower stair turret. The four-bay nave arcades have octagonal piers with moulded capitals; some alternate capitals in the north arcade feature nailhead moulding. On the south side, the third pier from the east has four shafts attached at the diagonals, and the east and west responds have keeled shafts. The stepped-profile arches display complex mouldings including keels. These features suggest a 13th-century date, though the two arcades may be of different periods. The chancel is rendered and painted, with a small arch-headed piscina in the south wall.

The church contains a notable collection of furnishings and fittings. The pine pews date to 1877, with sloped backs and inverted Y-shape end frames. A high altar of oak in Perpendicular style was made in 1894. The north chapel retains a good 17th-century communion table with heavy baluster legs and scrolled frieze. A plain octagonal font of 1877 stands alongside another, possibly pre-Reformation, of unorthodox inverted ogee form, apparently converted from another object. The outstanding oak chancel screen is probably of late 15th-century date, featuring cusped ogee lights and a dado with similar tracery beneath a frieze of trefoils in circles. Its superstructure is coved and rib-vaulted below a fretted frieze. After several relocations, it was reinstated in 1939.

The stained glass includes the east window by Camm Brothers of Smethwick (1877); two chancel windows by Powell & Sons (Flint memorial, 1923) and by C.E. Kempe (Hall memorial, 1905); and a north aisle east window by Camm Brothers (1881). The church also preserves unusual brass plates to Stephen Coe (1614) and Elizabeth Coe (1653, larger and decorative); John Johnson (1680); and the Pigot family (1727 and 1718). Marble tablets include one with a leafy frame and cherubs to Henry Halfhide (1689), and another to Richard Brownlow (1706) featuring swags, a skull, swept pediment with lamps and arms. The north aisle contains a Nottinghamshire alabaster memorial with a kneeling figure between Corinthian columns, dating to around 1600-20. A plain octagonal font or column base, perhaps medieval, stands outside the south porch.

The church occupies a bare rise within a very large churchyard, bounded to the south by 18th or early 19th-century brick walls, with low rubble boundary walls and a simple oak lych gate to the south-east.

The early history is obscure; no church is mentioned in Domesday, and the first recorded rector dates to 1277. The tower was repaired following lightning damage in 1823. The church was repewed in 1831. The major restoration of 1876-7 by T.C. Hine cost approximately £3,500 and encompassed rebuilding most aisle walls; constructing a new south porch; restoring walls, floors, roofs, woodwork and ironwork; repairing the defective south aisle arcade; installing many new fittings; adding an organ in the south aisle; and rebuilding the upper tower with new pinnacles and parapet. Fragments of a Norman font and badly burned stonework were discovered during this work. The church reopened on 31 October 1877. Thomas C. Hine (1813-99) was a prolific Nottingham architect whose extensive output encompassed commercial and domestic work in Italianate and Jacobethan styles, as well as ecclesiastical commissions. He restored Nottingham Castle with antiquarian sensitivity between 1875 and 1878. Further restoration in 1880 under C. Hodgson Fowler included the third relocation of the rood screen.