Church Of All Saints, Churchyard Wall, Railings And Gate

Church of All Saints, Churchyard Wall, Railings and Gate

The Church of All Saints is constructed of coursed Lincoln Heath limestone with Ancaster stone dressings and covered with early 21st-century plain tiles. The building comprises an aisleless nave, chancel, north vestry, and a three-stage tower to the south opposite the vestry.

The church has gabled roofs throughout the nave, chancel, vestry, and south porch. The south porch features a double-chamfered and rebated arch with engaged shaft responds and moulded capitals and bases. The two-bay nave is lit by three triple-lancet windows with central plate-tracery motifs on the south elevation and four on the north, each separated by stepped side buttresses. The west window contains plate-tracery consisting of three inverted stepped lancets and a five-cusped roundel, all recessed. Above this is a plain gable parapet with a Latin apex cross of similar design.

The north vestry is a plain, unbuttressed square structure with a gabled roof. An external round-headed door from the mid-12th century, reused from the old church, opens to the east. The vestry has a double shaft chimney and plate tracery to the gable roundel of six lights. The one-bay chancel, lower than the nave, has a single triple-lancet window with plate-tracery motifs on the outer lights on each elevation. At the east end, triple-lancet windows in chamfered stone surrounds contain stained glass, with a coped gable parapet and Latin cross at the apex above.

The south tower has three stages, each with clasping buttresses featuring three set-offs. A gabled recess to the east contains a memorial to Eleanor of Castile beneath a crocketed canopy, carved by Thomas Earp of Lambeth in 1876. The first stage displays a pair of single lancets with double-lancet bell openings and a billet-moulded corbel table above. The octagonal, shingled, splay-footed broach spire has two tiers of canopied lucarnes topped with a weathervane and is supported by angled buttresses.

The south porch roof has a coupled-rafter structure, and the inner doorway contains a double-leaf timber door on large bifurcating iron hinges. The nave walls are unplastered coursed ashlar, with floors in both nave and chancel laid with Godwin's encaustic tiles. The chancel floor bears a plaque reading: "Here died Eleanor of Castile Queen of England Nov. 27th 1290."

The four-bay nave roof comprises coupled rafters and scissor braces to each truss, dropping to plain stone corbels. Three steps lead to the chancel beneath a double-chamfered chancel arch with engaged semi-circular responds and moulded capitals and bases. Against the north respond stands a hexagonal Caen stone pulpit base, corbelled and moulded, supporting decorative brass railings and an eagle lectern of 1877. The scissor-braced chancel roof is boarded with exposed moulded ashlar posts. A plain sedilia is set in the chancel south wall.

The ten-stop manual organ, converted to electricity in the mid-20th century, has exposed pipes decorated by Heaton, Butler and Bayne and fills the chamfered archway into the vestry. The vestry contains fitted cupboards and a plain fireplace. The nave pews are of pitch pine in the simplest form, while the more elaborate chancel pews are oak. Beneath the chancel east window is a glass mosaic reredos of 1877 by James Powell and Sons of Whitefriars depicting the four gospels in roundels. The east windows by Heaton, Butler & Bayne depict the life of Christ. The lancet on the north elevation displays Holman Hunt's "Light of the World" while the south lancet shows the Good Shepherd. A late-15th-century octagonal font from the old church, relocated inside, features traceried panels on the stem and shields in quatrefoil panels on the bowl. Five bells in the tower were cast by Taylor's of Loughborough in 1877.

The churchyard wall has 19th-century cast-iron coping carrying wrought-iron railings with a matching gate.