Church Of All Saints

The Church of All Saints is a parish church dating back to the medieval period, with significant additions from the 18th century. It is constructed primarily of flint, with limestone dressings, and some areas of flint are rendered over. The roofs are pantiled, with a hipped roof over the north aisle. The church comprises a round west tower, a nave, a south porch, a north aisle, a chancel, and a north vestry.

The west tower is round, likely dating to before the Norman Conquest, and features pilaster strips around its base. It has single light bell openings and a later castellated brick parapet. The west window is of two lights, and has been much repaired and rendered over. The south porch entrance arch is obscured by later render, and a stoup on the east side of the opening has been partly filled in with red brick. The south wall contains a good 12th-century doorway with decorated shafts and capitals, arches with zigzag and roll mouldings, and a continuous zigzag pattern around the inner order. It has a hood mould with a flower motif and a keystone carved with a beast’s head. There are two 2-light south nave windows, one with a sub-divided Perpendicular head and the other with cusped Y-tracery. The chancel’s south wall has two cusped Y-tracery windows, with a blocked priest’s door between them. Two small, semicircular-headed high-level windows, one much restored, are also present. A short diagonal buttress of two stages is at the south-east corner, and a rebuilt brick buttress is at the north-east corner. The three-light east window has cusped intersecting tracery. Part of the north chancel wall has been rebuilt in red brick, with a pantiled lean-to in the north-east angle. The north aisle features a steeply pitched hipped roof, with a double and a single lancet window in the north wall, a blocked trefoil-headed window at a high level, and a blocked doorway below. A restored 3-light window with intersecting tracery is in the west wall.

Inside, the nave has a scissor-braced roof. The chancel ceiling is plastered and coved with a moulded cornice; the eastern end has a flat ceiling. The north aisle’s ceiling is also plastered and coved, with a flat centre. The north arcade consists of three bays with double-chamfered arches on massive octagonal piers, extending for two more bays into the chancel, with the eastern bay now blocked. The chancel arch is double-chamfered, with fragments of a hood mould and capitals. A rood stair rises from window sill level in the south-east corner of the nave. A narrow, semicircular-headed tower arch is present. A 16th-century chest tomb is in the chancel, against the blocked eastern bay of the arcade, displaying three panels of arms. A monument to Elizabeth Catelyne (died 1681) is on the north wall of the chancel, featuring a broken segmental pediment on Ionic columns and figure corbels. A tablet commemorates the building of the vestry in 1738 by Sir Charles Turner in memory of Sir Neville Catelyn and his wife. The chancel floor has good floor slabs, including one to John Watson, the ejected rector of Kirby Cane in 1646. Original features include a 17th-century communion rail with turned balusters and an octagonal 17th-century pulpit. The font is 14th century, with an octagonal bowl displaying traceried panels, figure corbels below the bowl, and engaged shafts around the stem.