Church Of All Saints

All Saints is a large and handsome medieval parish church with origins in the late 12th and 13th centuries. It was extensively remodelled and enlarged in the 14th to 16th centuries, and has undergone several major restorations — most significantly in 1878-79, 1885-86, and 1924. The tower was completely rebuilt in 1802-03 following the collapse of its medieval predecessor in 1800.

Materials and Construction

The church is constructed mainly of ragstone rubble with some flint and ironstone, and incorporates Roman brick in the chancel. Dressings are of clunch, limestone, Barnack stone, and a hard limestone resembling Purbeck, with some brick. The 16th-century south nave chapel is built of brick. Roofs are leaded except for the chancel, which is tiled.

Plan

The church comprises an aisled nave with west tower, north and south porches, north and south chapels flanking the aisles, and a southeast rood stair turret. The chancel has north and south chapels and a north vestry.

Exterior

The large west tower was rebuilt in 1802-03 after the collapse of the earlier tower of unknown medieval date in 1800. It reuses stone from the old tower and has heavy brick buttresses and a brick parapet. The windows originally had rounded heads with brick dressings and churchwardens' Gothic-style Y tracery, but were altered to Decorated style in 1924. At the same time, pinnacles were added to the tower parapet, and the west door was changed from a Georgian panelled door with glazed fanlight to a Decorated-style opening. Brick string courses dividing the tower into four stages were also removed, and the buttresses were altered with the addition of small gables on the offsets.

The chancel has late 12th- or 13th-century east quoins and had reached its present extent by that date. Remains of round-headed windows, presumably of the late 12th century, were discovered and removed when the east wall was rebuilt during the later 19th-century restorations. The chancel was given new windows, now heavily restored, in the 15th century. The chancel chapels and the two-storey northeast vestry are 14th-century in origin, and also have 15th-century windows. There is a 16th-century window in the upper storey of the vestry, which is probably an addition of that date, and has a plain parapet and low pitched roof.

The exterior of the north and south nave aisles may also be 13th-century in origin, as the south door and parts of the north door are of that date, and the lack of buttresses also points to a 13th-century origin, contemporary with the 13th-century arcades internally. The aisles were given new windows in the 14th century. The small rood stair turret at the east end of the south aisle was added in the late 14th or early 15th century. The north and south porches were added around 1400. They have restored, cusped barge boarding, and the north porch was given a glazed outer door in 2005. Small, projecting chapels were added to the east end of both aisles in the early 16th century. That on the north is very shallow, while that on the south is larger and was built of brick as a chantry for William Carpenter, vicar until 1526. Also in the 16th century, the clerestory was rebuilt and embattled parapets were added to the nave, aisles, chapels, and vestry.

Interior

The chancel arch was entirely rebuilt in 1879 and is 15th-century in style with many tiny mouldings on polygonal shafts with moulded capitals, and a hood mould with foliate stops. The arches from the aisles to the north and south chancel chapels were also rebuilt in the 19th century in a 15th-century style. The two-bay arcades to the north and south chancel chapels are 14th-century in origin, but were reworked in the 15th century and heavily restored in the 19th century. The door to the north vestry has a 14th-century door. The chancel has a restored boarded and panelled ceiling with carved bosses, 15th-century in origin.

The five-bay nave arcades are 13th-century in origin and have chamfered orders on round piers with moulded capitals. The western bays were shortened in 1802 when the tower was rebuilt, and the rest of the arcades were largely rebuilt along their original lines in the later 19th century. A blocked window in the nave south wall above the first pier of the south arcade may be the remains of a 13th-century clerestory. There is a wide 16th-century arch into the shallow north nave chapel and a narrower arch into the south nave chapel. The nave roof is low pitched with carved bosses and stands on demi-figures of angels. Of 15th-century origins, it was restored in the 18th century (east beam inscribed by Reginald Branwood, carpenter of Writtle, 1740) and 19th century, and again in the 20th century. The aisles have restored 15th-century roofs.

The tower arch in an Early English style was inserted in 1893 and replaces a door of 1802. The arch is closed by timber and glazed doors of 1955. A kitchen and toilets were installed in the base of the tower in 2000-02, when the bells were also rehung. A blocked door above the tower arch formerly provided access to a gallery.

Principal Fixtures

The church contains a 12th-century font, square with attached shafts at the angles. An early 13th-century piscina was reset in a new niche in the chancel in the 19th century. A few surviving 15th-century benches with poppyheads remain. The largely 19th-century choir stalls have some early 16th-century poppyheads and late 17th- or 18th-century openwork panels to the fronts. Plain 19th-century nave benches have shouldered ends. A mosaic reredos, integrated into the bottom of the east window by A.W. Blomfield of 1885-86, adorns the chancel. The pulpit dates from 1885, and the eagle lectern from 1895. Arts and Crafts Gothic screens to the north and south chancel chapels were designed by F.W. Chancellor in 1929. The screen from the chancel to the south chapel is the former chancel screen of 1909, also by Chancellor. The cresting was added in 1929.

Brasses

The church has a large number of surviving 16th- and 17th-century brasses, including Thomasin Thomas, her father and grandparents, 1513; Constance Berners, 1524; Edward Bell and wife, 1576; and Rose Pinchon, 1592, all made in London, and all restored in 1993 following the fire in the north chapel. Also Edward Hunt, died 1606, and Edward Bowland and wife, died 1609 and 1616, and a number of others.

Monuments

There are several excellent monuments inside the church. The most notable is a mural monument to Edward Pinchon and Dorethea (Weston), created in 1629 by Nicholas Stone. A version of another monument by Stone in Southwark Cathedral, it is an allegory on man's resurrection as a crop sown, reaped, and renewed by God. A female figure within a broken pediment stands on sheaves of wheat and reaches up towards the Sun of Righteousness in the centre, with two seated angels wearing reapers' hats at the sides. The pilasters supporting the pediment have decoration of agricultural implements.

Other important monuments include a Purbeck marble altar tomb in the chancel to Richard Weston, died 1572; a wall tablet to Edward, died 1595, and Jane Elliot, with kneeling figures facing each other across a desk; an alabaster wall cartouche with scrolls and arms to Elizabeth Knightbridge, died 1658; and a fine sarcophagus tomb surmounted by life-sized bust to Sir John Comyns, died 1740. Erected in 1759, it is signed by Sir Henry Cheere; it stood against a tall obelisk backdrop now in the south porch. Ledger slabs are also present.

Glass

Except for the arms of William of Wykeham, dated 1619 in the north vestry, the glass is largely 19th- and 20th-century. The south aisle chapel window of 1870 is by Clayton and Bell. South aisle windows by Ion Pace, 1899, and C.C. Powell of 1902, commemorate Queen Victoria. The chancel east window of 1914 is by H.W. Bryans. A south window of 1950 is by A.K. Nicholson, and the south chapel east window by Jane Gray of 1992.

Other Features

A fragment of wall painting of St George was uncovered above the north nave door. The north vestry door is 14th-century.

History

The parish of Writtle is one of the largest in Essex. Writtle was a royal manor in the Anglo-Saxon period, and lands belonging to the church and to a priest are mentioned in Domesday Book of 1086. The church was given to Bermondsey Abbey in 1143, and then in 1204 to the Hospital of the Holy Ghost in Rome, a papal foundation for English pilgrims to Rome. By the mid-13th century a cell of the hospital chaplains was established in Writtle, which probably helps to explain the size and grandeur of the 13th-century work on the church. There was also a chantry for the king in the church. The earliest fabric is late 12th-century, but the very irregular setting out of the building suggests that it was built around an older church. It was greatly extended in the 13th century, when the aisles were added. The chancel had also reached its present extent by the early 13th century. The tower was added at an unknown date but may have been 13th- or 14th-century in origin. The aisles were remodelled and given new windows in the 14th century, when the chancel chapels were added and the north vestry built. More new windows were installed in the 15th century, when the rood stair turret was built and the chancel arch rebuilt. In the late 14th century all alien priories (English cells of foreign monasteries) were dissolved and Writtle was bought in 1399 by William Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, as part of his foundation of New College, Oxford.

Some of the early 15th-century work on the chancel may be attributable to the college, but the nave was the responsibility of the parishioners. Writtle was a prosperous market town, and the parishioners did much work on the church. There were four chantries by the late Middle Ages, including a Guild of St John and a Lady Chapel, the latter possibly a detached building in the churchyard. In the early 16th century, small chantry chapels were added to both aisles, the clerestory raised and rebuilt, the parapets added and the upper part of the vestry built. 17th-century refurnishing is recorded, and work was also done on the roofs in this period. The nave and aisle roofs were repaired in the 18th century, and new furnishing are also recorded.

Considerable refurnishing was undertaken in the post-Reformation period, but little of it survives. The collapse of the tower in 1800 was attributed to its having been "at different times very injudiciously repaired," and the rest of the church also seems to have been in poor condition by the 19th century. The medieval tower collapsed in 1800 and was rebuilt in 1802-03, a project paid for and directed by a parishioner, Henry Lambirth. The church was heavily restored in the later 19th century, including the removal of most of the 17th- and 18th-century furnishings and the rebuilding of much of the fabric, including work on the nave by Frederic Chancellor in 1878-79 and on the chancel by A.W. Blomfield in 1885-86. The tower was remodelled in 1924, including the refashioning of all of the windows and the west door to make them more medieval in appearance. There was further minor reordering in the 20th century, and restoration after fires at the east end in 1974 and 1991. In 2000-02, service facilities were installed in the base of the tower. The chancel arch, for instance, was "in a crippled state and supported by a modern contrivance" in 1856. The harsh restoration of the 19th century, which saw the replacement of much medieval fabric, was not untypical of the period, but the medievalising of the early 19th-century west tower in 1924 is unusually late for such a drastic change. The church was more sympathetically restored in the late 20th century following two fires at the east end.

Significance

The Church of All Saints is designated at Grade II* for its architectural and historical importance. It is a large and handsome 13th-century parish church with significant additions and remodelling from the 14th to 16th centuries, and an early 19th-century tower, albeit heavily restored in the 19th and 20th centuries. Its intricate history and development, reflected in its fabric, connect the parish with significant religious orders and patrons in the Middle Ages. The church retains good fittings including 15th-century benches and restored 15th-century roofs. It is particularly notable for its monuments, including a series of fine 16th-century London brasses, an especially fine allegorical monument by Nicholas Stone, and another (albeit altered) by Sir Henry Cheere.