Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

A parish church at East Winch, built in the 14th and 15th centuries and restored in 1878 by Sir Gilbert Scott. The building is constructed of carstone rubble, partly rendered, with a slate roof.

The church comprises a west tower, nave with north and south aisles, chancel, south porch, and organ bay. The 3-stage embattled tower has some iron conglomerate at its base and to the west return of the south aisle. A stepped angle buttress stands to the north-west; the south-west angle features a wide diagonal buttress containing a stair turret, with further diagonal buttresses and a turret parapet decorated with ashlar panelling and pinnacles to the parapet angles. The wide west doorway has a 4-centred arch with figure stops. The 3-light west window, partly renewed, has panel tracery in the central light and quatrefoils in the flanking lights, breaking the string course. The second stage contains small narrow trefoil-headed lights with a string course. The third stage has clock faces to east and west, added in 1908, and bell openings of two cusped lights under a quatrefoil.

The nave, built in the mid-15th century at the expense of Elizabeth Howard, features north and south clerestoreys each with four 2-light openings having super transoms and panel tracery. A gable parapet at the nave contains a medieval stone bellcote. Both the north and south aisles have lead roofs, diagonal buttresses, and three 3-light openings with panel tracery and brick and flint voussoirs. The west windows to the aisles match the clerestorey design. The south aisle hood moulds display grotesque stops, with a scratch dial to the central buttress. The north doorway matches the south doorway but has a rebated hood mould and is blocked.

The 15th-century south porch is of brick with a high gable parapet bearing the head of an 8-rayed cross and shaped brick kneelers. Diagonal buttresses flank the structure. The south facade features flint flushwork and a tall 4-centred arch in brick with continuous mouldings; above this are a niche and stone sundial. The returns contain some carstone and three 3-light openings in brick under 4-centred arches with cusp-headed lights, panel tracery, and supermullions above, the lower parts of the lights being blocked. The porch has a 19th-century roof and brick-capped wall benches. The south doorway, partly renewed, has a continuous moulding to an equilateral arch and an episcopal head stop to the right. The 15th-century door retains some original muntins and boards, is box braced and nailed to the rear with a wooden lock and bar.

An organ bay in uncoursed carstone rubble has been attached to the east of the south aisle by Sir Gilbert Scott, occupying the site of the former Howard Chapel.

The chancel features diagonal buttresses. The mid-19th-century east window has five lights of even height with two super transoms and carstone heads to the openings; the lower jambs alternate between brick and flint. The south chancel contains some limestone and galletted carstone, with a 4-centred arch to the priest's doorway and a 3-light opening with panel tracery. The north chancel has two buttresses and two 3-light openings with panel tracery as found in the aisles, one within a blocked archway to a former north chapel.

The interior features a 4-bay arcade running north and south, dating to the mid-15th century. The clustered piers support double-chamfered arches, the outer being hollow and the inner with roll chamfer; figure stops adorn the arcade hood. The nave roof, supported by stone angle corbels on slender colonettes, is a hammerbeam roof of 1878. The south aisle retains a 15th-century braced roof with moulded principal beams and traceried spandrels. A tall tower arch with bowtell jambs carries a 15th-century tower roof of ties braced from figure corbels. The tall chancel arch, with jambs matching those of the nave piers and figure stops, supports a 15th-century double frame chancel roof with moulded purlins, restored in 1878. Wall posts from stone corbels were renewed in 1878. Remnants of a double-chamfered 14th-century arch with polygonal piers and low imposts mark the former north chapel; a similar arch to the organ bay to the south dates to 1878.

A 14th-century octagonal font, the gift of the Howard family, displays five faces with foliage, one bearing Howard arms, one a shield with a cross, and one blank shield. The octagonal font cover, with crockets and concave sides, features heraldic painting by Sir Ninian Comper, a copy of a 17th-century illustration of the original cover. A large wineglass pulpit of 1876 in burr elm stands in the church. Eighteenth-century Hanoverian arms appear over the tower arch. Two restored 15th-century bench ends with poppyheads and mythical animals remain in the front two pews of the nave.

The north aisle contains a 12th-century pillar piscina on a twisted stem, three panels of 15th-century screen painted with foliage pattern, fragments of medieval glass, a consecration cross on the north wall, and two reset coffin lids—one of the mid-15th century showing a mason's square and chisel either side of a wheelhead cross. Seven 15th-century benches with poppyhead bench ends are present. The south aisle contains six 15th-century benches with poppyhead bench ends. The chancel has a plain piscina and a mural memorial to Owen Barnes dated 1670, of slate and stone with a scrolled broken pediment.