Parish Church Of St Dunstan And All Saints (The Church Of The High Seas)

The Parish Church of St Dunstan and All Saints, also known as The Church of the High Seas, is a historic parish church located on High Street in Stepney. It is built from Kentish ragstone, rubble, and flint, featuring stone dressings and a tiled roof. The church has ancient foundations that were rebuilt in the 10th century, with a chancel from the 13th century and a seven-bay nave and aisles from the 15th century. The nave and aisles have battlemented parapets, two-light clerestorey windows, and renewed three-light windows. The west tower, also from the 15th century, has three stages, battlements, pinnacles, and angle buttresses, along with a beacon tower on the south side. North and south porches and a hexagonal vestry room were added in 1871-72 by architects Newman and Billing.

Inside, the nave's north and south aisles were rebuilt around 1500, when the chancel arch was removed. The church features seven-bay arcades with two-centred arches on quatrefoil piers, and a 13th-century sedilia in the chancel. The vestry room has an open timber roof.

The church has undergone several restorations, including extensive work in 1849 by Benjamin Ferrey, further restorations in 1872 by Newman and Billing, and additional work by Cutts and Cutts in 1899 and again in 1901-02 after a fire, which included rebuilding the nave roof. In 1949, C Wontner Smith restored the church following war damage, renewing the flooring and reordering the east end.

Notable fittings include an Anglo-Saxon stone relief panel of the Crucifixion from the early 11th century, a relief of the Annunciation circa 1400 above the north chancel door, and various funerary monuments from the 16th to 19th centuries. These include a recessed tomb chest for Sir Henry Colet, who died in 1510, a bust of Dr John Berry from 1689 in the north aisle, and a monument to Benjamin Kenton from 1800 by Westmacott, featuring a relief of the Good Samaritan. The east window, created by Hugh Easton in 1949, depicts the Crucifixion above a tableau of blitzed Stepney, and there is a sailors' memorial window by Easton in the north aisle. The organ, installed in the north-west aisle in 1971, was originally by Father Willis from St. Augustine's in Haggerston. The church also retains a clock with its original workings by Thwaites from 1804, and a stone, reputedly from Carthage, is set into the south aisle wall with an inscription from 1663.