Church Of All Saints Including Boundary Wall To Churchyard

The Church of All Saints in Weston Longville is a parish church largely dating to the 14th century, with a west tower from the 13th century. The church is constructed of flint, with some brick and conglomerate, and limestone dressings. The roofs are plain tiled, with leaded aisle roofs and black-glazed pantiles on the porch. The squat, square west tower is unbuttressed and features semi-circular headed ball openings with Y tracery. A 15th-century south porch has angle buttresses to the gable wall, displaying remains of flushwork panels and a frieze of panels with shields, surmounted by an ogee-headed niche bearing the arms of the French Merchant Adventurers. A 18th-century memorial tablet to the Duning family (+1738) has been reset into the gable wall. The unbuttressed south aisle has three three-light Perpendicular windows, and a carved head-corbel adorns the east parapet. The Decorated chancel was extensively renewed in 1880; it incorporates a priest’s door in the south wall. The east window of the north aisle has three cusped lancets under a four-centred arch. The Perpendicular north windows of three lights, with a square label, are likely from the 1880 restoration. A north doorway features a continuous hollow chamfer. The clerestory has five bays of quatrefoils. The south door retains its medieval ironwork. The north and south arcades, dating to the 14th century, consist of six bays with octagonal piers and double-chamfered arches, one chamfer hollow on the south side, indicating a slightly earlier date. A 15th-century Perpendicular painted screen separates the nave and chancel, featuring twelve painted panels depicting the Apostles, with panel tracery above ogee-headed arches. Good painted figures are visible on the north and south sides of the chancel arch, and a fine 14th-century wall painting of the Tree of Jesse is on the north aisle wall. A rood stair is located on the south side of the chancel arch. A fine 14th-century piscina and triple sedilia are set into the south chancel wall. A pre-Reformation altar slab was moved from the nave to the sanctuary in 1880, alongside a reredos with mosaic inlay of the same era. The roofs are 19th century, with crown posts on tie beams in the nave, and arch-braced principal rafters, boarded and facetted ceilings in the chancel. Monuments include those to the Thorne family (1811 and later) on the north aisle wall, to Henry Rookwood (+1718) on the east wall of the south aisle, and to Rev. James Woodforde (+1803) on the north wall of the chancel; Woodforde, the well-known 18th-century diarist, served as rector of Weston Longville from 1775. The font has a plain octagonal bowl on a large central column with four Purbeck marble shafts. Part of the font base incorporates an early carving of a crucifix, believed to be Saxon. A brass dating to 1533 commemorates Elizabeth Rokewood. The churchyard wall is of flint with brick capping and half-round copings, included for group value and for the reuse of fragments of medieval window tracery at the south-east corner.