Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

A parish church with a complex building history spanning from the early 12th century to the 19th century. The structure comprises a 12th-century nave, a 13th-century rebuilt and enlarged chancel, a 16th-century west tower with parts possibly dating to the 17th or 18th century, and a 19th-century south porch.

The walls are of plastered flint rubble, with the base of the west tower in brick with knapped flint facing. The upper storeys of the tower are timber framed and weatherboarded. The roof is of red plain tiles with side purlin construction.

The chancel contains an early 13th-century east window of three graduated lancets, a 13th-century recut lancet to the north wall, and a widened and restored 13th-century lancet on the south wall's eastern side. The western window on the south wall is 16th-century, of moulded terracotta with two cinquefoiled lights in a square head.

The nave has a north wall with two windows: an eastern lancet and a western three-light casement in a timber surround with diamond-leaded panes and a swan's head catch to the centre light. Between these is an outstanding early 12th-century doorway featuring plain jambs, a round arch, and chamfered imposts. A 12th or 13th-century nailed five-board door with reversed C upper strap hinge and wrought lower strap hangs here. The south wall contains a 15th-century east window of two cinquefoiled lights in a square head with moulded label, and a 13th-century restored lancet to the west.

The south doorway, dating to around 1160, is exceptionally fine. It has a round arch of three orders: the inner decorated with squares and diaper work, the outer two with moulded fleuron billet and crenellated enrichments, and billet enrichment to the moulded label. The jambs have square inner orders and two detached shafts with plain bases and foliated capitals of different designs, each bearing banding bosses with face and side compass point discs. A late 13th-century nailed door of four feathered battens with strap hinges survives, along with a 15th-century foliated scutcheon plate. The 19th-century south porch is timber framed and weatherboarded on a brick plinth, with a gabled roof.

The west tower has a knapped flint ground floor with stone dressings to buttresses, a stair turret, and two-stage plinth angles. A loop light serves the stair turret. The west doorway has moulded jambs and a four-centred arch in a square head with traceried spandrels and moulded labels, surmounted by a shield dated 1527. The upper stages are timber framed and weatherboarded, with a short red tiled spire and slanting red tiled roof to the stair turret. The timber frame incorporates early material but is of later date.

The interior chancel roof comprises seven cants with moulded wall plates and one plain tie beam. A piscina with moulded trefoiled head, defaced label, moulded capitals and bases to shafted jambs, and chamfered shelf (without drain) survives. Nineteenth-century wrought iron altar rails are present.

The chancel's outstanding feature is a mid-17th-century marble altar tomb monument for Sir John Sammes and his wife Isabell (Garrard). The shelf has a central inscribed pedimented panel, flanked by kneeling figures facing each other in prayer—the man in armour, the woman in a mourning shroud. Behind them are two arched recesses flanked by moulded pilasters. Below the central panel, in a recess, is another kneeling male figure in armour with missing legs, probably Sir Garrard Sammes, son of the above. A moulded and crenellated tie beam with wall posts and spandrels with scalloped soffits replaces the chancel arch.

The nave roof dates to the 15th century and comprises seven cants, ceiled and plastered, with a simple wall plate. Three tie beams with wall posts and arched braces support it; the eastern tie beam has carved head corbels, while the western has no arched braces. A 19th-century pulpit incorporates early 17th-century panelling and frieze carved with foliage. A 15th-century octagonal font with moulded top edge and different forms of tracery to each face survives on a modern stem and base.

The incomplete tower arch retains original semi-octagonal responds with moulded bases, now fitted with a chamfered segmental pointed head.