Church Of All Saints

The Church of All Saints is a complex building with elements from the 15th century, 13th century, and 19th and 20th centuries. Designed by H.N.Jepson, it was largely rebuilt between 1946 and 1958, following significant damage from bombing in 1941. It is constructed of regular coursed and ashlar sandstone with plain-tile roofs. The church comprises an aisled nave, a chancel, a west tower, and a north organ chamber.

The chancel, of regular coursed stone, features a splayed plinth, low diagonal buttresses, and buttresses flanking the two-offset east window. The east window is partly 13th century but incorporates 20th-century intersecting tracery, beneath a hood mould. A 19th-century gable parapet includes kneelers with carved heads. The north and south windows have late 19th-century cusped Y-tracery and hood moulds with head stops, likely medieval to the north. A two-bay, late 19th-century organ chamber features diagonal and east buttresses and a three-light Perpendicular-style window. The aisles have six lancet windows.

The Perpendicular tower has three stages. The first stage has clasping buttresses and quatrefoil panelling. A doorway placed below the west window cuts into the lower part of it, leading to 20th-century double-leaf doors. A three-light window has deep hollow-chamfered jambs, with a continued hood mould serving as a string course. The second stage has diagonal buttresses and a slate clock-face with a moulded frame dated 1813. The third stage has hollow-chamfered two-light bell-chamber openings with renewed tracery and louvres, a moulded cornice, and an embattled parapet. A wrought iron and gilded weathervane tops the tower. A small stair projection is located at the south east corner, featuring a Tudor arch doorway.

The interior is plastered, and the chancel has a late 19th-century arched brace roof with stone corbels. The north and south arches are of two chamfered orders, with the outer order being segmental pointed. The late 19th-century chancel arch is in an Early English style, composed of two orders, the inner order having shafts. The tower arch is of two moulded orders, the inner order with half-octagon responds.

The church has historical associations as the baptismal place of George Eliot. After the wartime bombing, portions of the church were rebuilt with the assistance of German prisoners of war.