Church Of All Saints

The Church of All Saints is a parish church located in Ashbocking, with origins in the medieval period and significant alterations made in the 16th century. It underwent restorations in 1824 and between 1870 and 1873. The church comprises a chancel, nave, west tower, and south porch. The medieval walls are primarily made of plastered rubble with freestone dressings, and the roofs are covered with plain tiles.

The chancel features work from the mid-13th century, including plate-traceried windows on the north and south sides, along with a matching doorway and piscina. The east window is a 19th-century restoration, surrounded by red brick rebuilding. The nave contains much mid to late 14th-century work, characterized by 2-light dagger-traceried windows and restored grotesque corbels. The heavily moulded south doorway from the mid-14th century retains its original grotesque corbels and an adjacent stoup. A notable late 14th-century tomb recess is found in the south wall, richly carved with an ogee-arched head, buttress-shafts, and crocketed finials, likely belonging to a member of the de Bocking family.

The tower, built of red brick in the mid-16th century, features a compact grid of diaper-patterning in burnt headers, while the upper stage, possibly added around 1600, lacks this patterning. The west doorway is moulded and labelled, with a large 3-light window in ashlar above it. The porch, also constructed in mid-16th century brick with diaperwork, includes a 4-centred arched doorway topped with a carved limestone angel and crow-stepped gables, similar to the brickwork at Ashbocking Hall.

Inside, the nave has a plain and somewhat poor mid to late 16th-century hammerbeam roof, with similar roofs in the chancel and porch that have been largely restored; the windbraces are a 19th-century addition. The font is Norman in style, resembling a cauldron, and is set on 19th-century shafts; the oak cover, designed in the 15th-century manner, is likely a 19th-century piece. The nave contains a set of sixteen 17th-century pews, notable for their unusual buttresses at the square ends, alongside 19th-century benches that incorporate reused 15th-century poppyhead ends. On a panel mounted on the north wall are brasses commemorating Edmund Bocking (1585) with his two wives and two daughters. In the chancel, there is a slab with a brass featuring an acrostic epitaph for Thomas Horseman, dated 1619, along with three other slabs from the 18th century.