Church of All Saints

Church of All Saints, Hundon

The Church of All Saints is a pre-Conquest foundation, mentioned in Domesday Book, though the earliest surviving fabric dates from the early 14th century. The chancel and aisles are 14th-century work, with the remainder of the building largely dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, including some post-medieval repairs. The church was entirely gutted by fire in February 1914 and rebuilt between 1914 and 1916 to designs by the architects Detmar Blow and Fernand Billerey. The rebuilding largely followed the original design, though the architects deliberately did not entirely obliterate the fire damage to the masonry, giving the church a less restored appearance than many similar buildings.

The church is constructed of flint rubble with stone dressings and some brick repairs, with fragments of render in places. The roofs are tiled and leaded. The plan comprises a nave with north and south aisles, a west tower, a south porch, a chancel, and a south chapel.

The exterior demonstrates the church's multi-period development. The aisles retain early 14th-century windows with ogee reticulated tracery toward their west ends, and good mid-14th-century windows with flowing tracery are visible in the north and south walls of the chancel. The chancel has a steeply pitched roof and a crowstepped east gable. The tall west tower features an embattled parapet and a south east stair turret rising above the parapet. The stair turret has a small wooden bellcot on top, possibly 18th-century in origin. The south and west tower buttresses display grotesques. There is no west door, but a very tall west window of the later 14th century with two transomed lights. The scar of an earlier, steeply pitched roof is visible against the east face of the tower.

The church was remodelled in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, during which period the remaining aisle windows, the east window, and those in the south chapel were constructed. The two-storied south porch, very badly damaged by the fire, retains the remains of statue niches on its buttresses and flint flush work blind arcading on the upper storey, which was repaired in brick. The south door is late 14th-century. The openwork parapet on the clerestory features quatrefoils with feathered cusps above; only the fragment on the north survived the fire, while that on the south was wholly rebuilt in the early 20th century with heads and grotesques on the string below. The clerestory was entirely rebuilt at this time and displays windows of three uncusped lights in four-centred heads in late 15th or early 16th-century style. The north aisle parapet shows 18th-century brick repairs.

The interior is very plain and is largely 20th-century work except for some window mullions and a few other surviving fragments. The design mirrors the original church. The nave arcades are executed in 14th-century style with polygonal piers, moulded capitals, and pointed, chamfered arches. The corbelled shafts that formerly supported the nave roof, entirely destroyed in the fire, are indicated by schematic shafts and corbel blocks in the present clerestory. The late 15th-century doorway to the rood stair survives at the east end of the north aisle, and there are four medieval roof corbels surviving in the north aisle and two in the south aisle. The tower arch is very tall and narrow, reaching almost to the top of the clerestory. The wide chancel arch is executed in 15th-century style with polygonal responds, moulded capitals, and finely moulded arch. The south chapel opens to the chancel through a 15th-century style arch featuring unusual triple respond shafts that terminate in a blank section at the bottom, apparently an alteration by Blow and Billerey.

Principal fixtures include a restored 14th-century piscina in the chancel and another in the north aisle. Late medieval woodwork with blind tracery in the south chapel survived the fire because it was in the vicarage at the time. Royal arms of George III are displayed. An early 20th-century font of polygonal form without division between bowl and stem, with alternate faces ending in a stylised volute, is present. A tablet on the north wall of the chancel commemorates John Norfolk, vicar, who died in 1749. A few fragmentary medieval monuments are present, including parts of a 13th-century monument, and the wheatsheaf finial from the monument to Mrs Arethusa Vernon (died 1728), from an imposing pyramidal tomb formerly located in the churchyard and demolished in 1983, is housed loose in the church.

The church was partly restored and reseated in 1888 before the disastrous fire of February 1914. The reconstruction by Detmar Blow and Fernand Billerey, undertaken between 1914 and 1916, was characterised by conservative principles in keeping with Arts and Crafts ideals. Blow, who had worked for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings on the restoration of the tower at nearby Clare between 1898 and 1899 among other projects, entered into partnership with the French-trained Fernand Billerey in 1905. Together they undertook work on many country and London houses, including commissions on the Grosvenor estate. The Hundon restoration exemplifies Blow's approach to such work, markedly different from the later metropolitan commissions he subsequently undertook.