Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

Parish church at St Paul's Walden. The building contains work from the 12th or 13th century onwards, with the tower set on a different axis to the nave. The earliest visible features include flint rubble walling with coursed flint facing and stone dressings. A window in the south aisle dates to around 1300. The early 14th century saw the construction of the south arcade, north windows to the nave, chancel arch, and details in the lower part of the tower. The 15th century added the upper stage to the tower, clearstorey windows, and embattled parapets. An early 16th-century south chapel (known as the Hoo or Lady Chapel) was added, and the chancel was remodelled in 1727 for Edward Gilbert of the Bury. The church underwent major restoration between 1891 and 1895 by Bodley and Garner (with Rattee and Kett of Cambridge as contractor), was completed with a northeast vestry added in 1901, an east window opened in 1946, and a chancel colour scheme applied in 1972 by Raymond Erith. Church rooms in the churchyard linked to the north door were added in 1973–4 by Priestman, Williams & Bennett.

The building has steep red tile roof to the chancel and slate roof to the nave hipped to the east, with flatter pitched metal roofs behind parapets elsewhere. It comprises a chancel and south chapel, a higher nave with windows at two levels on the north side, a south aisle, gabled south porch, and a heavy buttressed west tower. A small northeast vestry has gabled corner buttresses.

The chancel has two small round-headed north windows which provided its only lighting until 1946. The interior features a three-bay plaster-vaulted space with stone floor dotted with black. The barrel vault has a panelled central ridge with coffered arches on panelled pilasters with moulded impost. Fielded panels line the lower parts of the walls with windows in the end bays on the north, decorated with paterae and garlands in spandrels. An elaborate memorial plaster panel with eared surround occupies the middle of the south wall, featuring an oval centre with a relief urn with putti and "EG ob 1762" inscribed on the urn. A painted inscription on the back of the screen centrepiece records "THIS/Chancel was First/Repair'd & Beautifi'd/by EDWARD GILBERT/ESQ of the Bury/in the Year of our Lord 1727." The central panel on the north wall contains an armorial centre with a door to the vestry discreetly inserted below.

An elaborate carved wooden reredos fills the east wall with fluted Corinthian pilasters and an arched centre in triumphal arch motif. Segmental pediments to three parts have finials rising above, with putti supporting the ends of the pediments. A lamb and flag central panel sits behind the altar. The central round-headed panel now contains a stained glass memorial window of the Crucifixion by Hugh Easton from 1946. An elegant stone altar from 1957 stands on two stone pedestals.

An elaborate carved wooden screen under the chancel arch has been altered to match the profile of the chancel vault. It features triple arches with a higher and wider central opening, four slender Corinthian columns with separate pieces of entablature raised on a high panelled plinth with a central wrought iron gate. The stepped top above the arches has pairs of putti supporting urns with scrolled candelabra and finials, with a similar ogee curved upper feature.

The tall rectangular nave has a five-bay south arcade from around 1320 on octagonal piers with moulded caps and bases, two-centred arches of two chamfered orders, and hoodmould with heads. Three ogee-pointed Decorated windows in the north wall, also from around 1320, each have two trefoil lights with tracery and deep reveals. A pointed north door with segmental rear arch is contemporary. Three clearstorey windows from the 15th century in the north and south walls have two cinquefoil lights. A narrow upper door for the roodloft sits to the right of the chancel arch. A carved wooden pulpit in early 18th-century style occupies the southeast position after 1908. A flat boarded painted ceiling is divided by a grid of painted battens, with a coved cornice along the side walls and five corbels on the east wall bearing a painted Latin inscription below. This decoration was undertaken by Bodley and Garner. The tall tower arch has two moulded orders with half-octagonal responds, moulded caps and bases. A wooden gallery from 1897 stands high up at the west.

Fine lettering on black marble armorial slabs lines the central aisle. The south aisle has a five-bay open timber roof and a raised plinth three steps higher at the west end with a stone fifteenth-century font. The octagonal font has an embattled bowl with a band of leaf carving, an octagonal panelled shaft, and a moulded base. An oak cover features an openwork ogee finial. An adjoining south window of three trefoil lights with Kentish tracery has a moulded rear arch and label dating to around 1300. A plain fourteenth-century doorway opens to the east, and two fifteenth-century three-light windows with cinquefoil lights under segmental heads are visible. A blocked window in the west wall shows similar tracery of the head exposed externally. In the northwest angle a narrow four-centred doorway accesses the tower stair. A large chest tomb in the southwest angle has polished black marble panels with recessed baluster corners, a reeded band, and an inscription to Peter Nicol (died 1798) on the north side. Varied stone corbels, including one gargoyle, support the inner end of trusses with wheel-tracery in spandrels on the north. A moulded purlin and wallplates are visible.

The south chapel has a similar painted boarded ceiling to the nave. The east window has four cinquefoil lights under a square head, and three south windows have three lights with square heads. A small four-centred south doorway provides access. A three-bay stone arcade on the north has four-centred arches blocked at mid-depth of the wall with capitals and hexagonal piers with bases cut in the upper parts into half-octagonal shafts with a hollow fillet between. An arch to the south aisle exhibits similar detail. Many black marble armorial slabs occupy the floor. Recessed into the west wall to the left of the arch is a wall monument to Henry Stapleford (died 1631) and his wife (died 1620), featuring kneeling figures facing across a desk with a child behind the wife. An open triangular pediment on black marble pilasters sits above an inscribed panel below. A discreet white and black marble wall monument commemorates the Hon George Bowes (died 1806). A simple oak screen at the entrance dates to the fifteenth century with a panelled lower part and two lights on each side of the entrance and a gilded transom to the top. Each light has a depressed ogee arch and Perpendicular tracery.

Externally, the Perpendicular four-light east window has carved spandrels and moulded strings rising in a V up the gable with descenders and carved stops. Similar ferramenta appear on the south side of the chapel. Clunch dressings have been repaired in plaster. An angle buttress and two buttresses ending below the height of the window heads frame the chapel.

The gabled south porch has an outer arch of two continuously chamfered orders with stone seats and a restored medieval roof of one bay. Hollow chamfered stone corbels at corners support knee-braces and wallposts to chamfered cambered tie-beams bearing short king-posts with hollow chamfered braces to a hollow-chamfered ridge beam. Chamfered end stopped wallplates and flat rafters complete the roof structure. The south door features two continuously moulded orders with an oak door of moulded battens.

The west tower comprises two stages with large angle buttresses. The west wall extends to the south in a projecting stair turret carried higher than the embattled parapet, topped with a pole and vane. A fourteenth-century west window of a single trefoil light has a rebate for an internal shutter and contains early fourteenth-century stained glass showing the Virgin and Child, with the Virgin rendered mostly in brown and green and the child draped in red. A fourteenth-century west doorway has two continuous hollow chamfered orders. Narrow plain lancets occupy three sides high up in the ground stage. Two-light quatrefoil-headed bell openings appear on each side. Openings at five levels occur on the west side. A moulded plinth runs beneath the stair turret and buttresses but not the tower.