Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints, Isleworth

This is the medieval parish church of Isleworth, a building of considerable complexity that reflects multiple phases of transformation across nearly six centuries.

The dominant feature is a late 15th-century west tower built of ragstone rubble with freestone dressings. The tower rises in two stages with diagonal buttresses on its west face, an embattled parapet with octagonal corner pinnacles topped by crocketted finials, and a projecting south-east stair-turret. The west doorway is Perpendicular in style with a square head and shields carved in the spandrels. Above it sits a four-light unglazed Perpendicular window, with two and three-light belfry windows under square heads.

In 1706–7 the medieval nave and chancel were demolished and rebuilt by John Price. This 18th-century church survives as a stock brick shell with red brick window surrounds, though reduced in height. The west bays of the aisles retain blind 18th-century doorways with pediments on console brackets, while the north and south aisle walls preserve 18th-century round-headed windows. The outer aisle walls were retained when the building was substantially reconstructed in the 1960s.

The church was gutted by arson fire on 27 May 1943. The major rebuilding took place between 1967 and 1970 by architect Michael Blee. Rather than pursuing traditional reconstruction, Blee created a strikingly original modern building within the footprint of the 1706 church. The nave now forms an unroofed courtyard. The former aisles have been redeveloped as roofed single-storey spaces in modern brick and concrete. The worship space occupies the site of the former chancel, with a west-end glazed wall opening onto the courtyard. It is a brick box with full-height slit windows—three to the east end and two to each side between buttresses—and a fully glazed west wall with narrow timber lights. Gabled projections express top-lighting. The interior features a four-cell timber roof creating a quasi-vaulted effect, with strip top-lighting and west-end galleries flanking the entrance. A two-storey south block overlooking the Thames contains a small chapel with a projecting south bay, sundial, and peaked lead roof with finial; this block is linked to the main church.

Earlier alterations included a 1706–7 reconstruction, reseating and raising of the floor in 1821 (architect William Walker), and the addition of a Gothic Revival chancel, organ chamber and vestry in the 1860s. The church was restored in 1866 by William Walker.

Two important monuments survive the fire: Francis Bird's Baroque monument to Sir Orlando Gee (died 1705), a half-figure of great accomplishment now in the west gallery, and the monument to Mrs Anne Dash (died 1750) by William Halfpenny, also in the gallery. Two brasses from the old church remain. Modern stained glass is by Keith New.

Blee's innovative approach earned the church a Civic Trust award in 1973. As architectural historians Cherry and Pevsner observed, the architect "grafted on to the old tower and nave walls a building not afraid to make an uncompromisingly original twentieth-century statement." The juxtaposition of the medieval tower, truncated 18th-century walls, and bold modern rebuild creates a complex of poignant historical layering beside the River Thames.