Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

Church. The building comprises an Anglo-Saxon or Romanesque circular tower with a nave and chancel dating to around 1300, and a porch of around 1850. It is constructed of flint rubble rendered with brick and ashlar dressings, with a plain tiled roof that was originally thatched.

Tower

The circular western tower is the most distinctive feature. Its west face has a central buttress rising the full height and featuring four offsets. To the ground floor stages is a lancet light to the right with an ashlar surround of around 1300, above which are brick voussoirs. The belfry stage has lancet openings at right and left with similar ashlar surrounds, and a third similar opening facing east. Buttresses of the same type as the central example flank the tower and adjoin the nave wall, giving the tower a slightly oval appearance. The top is finished with ashlar coping. The tower fabric has been patched with brick and partly rendered in the twentieth century.

Nave and Porch

The south face of the nave is rendered. The porch to the left of centre is constructed of flint rubble with red brick quoins to the outer corners and either side of the central arched doorway. Brick kneelers and coping finish the gable, along with three pointed blank niches of brick positioned either side of the arch and in the gable. The side walls are rendered with a pantile roof.

To the right of the porch is a Perpendicular triple lancet window with four-centred heads to the lights, its ashlar surround partially rendered. Further right is a Perpendicular window of two lights with a hollow chamfered ashlar surround, cinquefoil heads to the lights, and quatrefoil and dagger ornaments to the apex; some tracery has been replaced.

The north face has a doorway to the right dating to around 1300 with a chamfered ashlar surround and hood mould. To the left of this are two windows set high in the wall consisting of paired lancets with four-centred heads and rendered and chamfered brick surrounds.

Chancel

The south wall has two Y-tracery windows with chamfered surrounds and hood moulds. Between them is a priest's door of similar date, also with chamfered surround and hood mould. The north face has a single window at the right with a rendered brick surround of three Perpendicular lights with panel tracery above and hood mould.

The east wall has diagonal buttresses at the angles dying into the corners via two offsets. The gable is finished with nineteenth-century ashlar kneelers and coping. The central three-light window features interlacing tracery with a chamfered surround, some of which has been replaced.

Interior

The porch doorway dates to around 1310 with a chamfered surround and hood mould.

In the nave and chancel, a doorway to the tower, now rendered and limewashed, has projecting springers and ashlar voussoirs to the round arch. The roof is of nineteenth-century date comprising three bays with wall posts resting on stone corbels and arched braces connecting to collars which support king posts. The nineteenth-century chancel arch has rectangular piers to either side with chamfered corners. The chancel roof is partially panelled and probably of nineteenth-century date but incorporates older timbers, with wall posts having rounded ends.

At the eastern end of the southern wall is a piscina with an ogee arch and hollow-chamfered surround. A lowered window sill forms sedilia. The flooring is of yellow brick throughout the nave and chancel.

A set of high eighteenth or early nineteenth-century box pews of wood-grained deal with panelled doors furnishes the interior. A double-decker pulpit, positioned on the nave side of the chancel arch to the south, has a deep stepped cornice. The pews retain their traditional arrangement whereby those within the chancel face west towards the pulpit, defying the later nineteenth-century reinstatement of chancel liturgy. Two simple candlestands with square poles and lipped circular tops stand in the church. At the western end are ramped and arched draught screens.

The font is octagonal with an octagonal step and circular shaft, both undecorated and possibly earlier than the comparatively small fifteenth or early sixteenth-century octagonal bowl, which features slightly sunken square panels to each side with quatrefoil tracery and square shields.

The northern and southern nave doors are directly opposite each other, each with a splayed reveal and cambered and chamfered relieving arch.