All Saints Church

All Saints Church, Bellwell Lane, Four Oaks

All Saints is a mid-sized red brick church in the Late Free Gothic style with Arts and Crafts touches, designed by the Birmingham architect Edwin Francis Reynolds and built between 1907 and 1909. The suburban expansion of Sutton Coldfield in the early 20th century prompted a scheme to build a new church in the parish of St James, Mere Green. Reynolds published his designs in 1906, and the church was consecrated in 1908 by the Bishop of Birmingham. An intended large saddleback tower over the porch was not completed due to funding constraints, leaving only a nave and temporary vestry in the original scheme. Reynolds rose to prominence through the local flowering of the Arts and Crafts movement in the 1890s, inspired by W.R. Lethaby. The church has been sympathetically enlarged with a choir vestry in 1954 and a chancel and clergy vestry added in 1965 by Wood, Kendrick & Williams, who later inherited Reynolds's architectural practice.

The church is constructed of Flemish bond brick with stone dressings and slate roofs laid in diminishing courses; the clergy vestry has a copper roof. The plan comprises a five-bay nave with passage aisles and a south-west porch, a chancel with a transeptal organ chamber to the south, an octagonal clergy vestry attached to the organ chamber by a short corridor, and a polygonal choir vestry at the west end.

Externally, the church is long and low, its dominant feature being an unbroken roof over nave and chancel. A stone bellcote rises over the chancel arch on the line of the original temporary east wall. The south side faces the road with a bulky porch intended as the base of a tower, and against its west side stands the base of a stair-turret. The porch gable contains a decorative cross of white brick, with another similar cross in the north wall of the chancel. Triangular-sectioned buttresses punctuate the walls throughout. The west window contains seven lights under a two-centred arch with free Perpendicular tracery, while the east window has five lights under a more angular arch. The aisles, porch, and choir vestry are lit by two-light windows with square heads and ogee-cusped lights. A semi-octagonal choir vestry with flat parapet, added in 1954, sits below the west window. The entire east end, added in 1965, is remarkably backward-looking for its date. A large transeptal organ chamber projects on the south side, featuring a flat-headed window in the gable with a decorative chequered vent panel above; similar panels occur in the east and west gables. The octagonal clergy vestry rises almost freestanding, resembling a medieval chapter house, its copper-clad roof ascending via a coronet to a slim spirelet. The north return of the chancel is articulated by a tall recessed panel with a segmental head.

The interior walls are of yellow brick with limestone dressings. Floors are predominantly wood-block, with stone paving in the chancel. The tall stone chancel arch springs from lozenge-shaped responds. The nave arcades feature moulded and chamfered arches dying into narrow hexagonal piers; their inner faces continue upward to plain corbel blocks supporting the roof trusses. Each bay of the passage aisles is bridged by a transverse brick arch and roofed by a transverse brick vault. The nave roof is vaulted on a mansard section in timber and plaster, with arch-braced trusses painted and gilded in the Arts and Crafts tradition. The chancel roof, added in 1965, is timber-boarded with plainer panels and decorated ribs. Doors to the choir vestry are set beneath the west window in a frame of three recessed arches.

The fittings are of high quality, chiefly in golden oak. The altar, dating to 1909, features a three-panelled front with a central relief of the Agnus Dei flanked by inlaid monograms of contrasting colour, and inlaid chevron borders in ebony. The altar rail has square newel posts and a moulded rail. The stalls and reader's desks display blind tracery end panels and cusped arches in the stall fronts. A plain oak-panelled pulpit stands on a stone base. The font has a shallow octagonal bowl carved with a frieze round the rim; its stem features engaged spiralled shafts with leafy capitals. Rood figures in painted limewood by John Poole were commissioned in 1992–1998. Oak chairs furnish the nave. Over the piers of the nave arcade hang lamps suspended on chains from wrought-iron brackets.

The stained glass represents a significant collection of artistic work. Lights in the choir vestry are by Nora Yoxall and Elsie Whitford, while other windows are by Harvey & Ashby of Birmingham. Glass by Osmund Caine, commissioned in the 1980s and 1990s, represents the largest collection of his stained glass work.