Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

A large church occupying a corner site on the outskirts of Eastbourne, set among early twentieth-century brick villas. The original church was built in 1877-1879 to designs attributed by Pevsner to T E C Streatfield. Following a major fire in 1927, the tower and vestry alone survived. The remainder of the church was rebuilt between 1929 and 1930 by architects Arthur R G Fenning and Peter D Stoneham of Eastbourne in a conservative late thirteenth-century Gothic style. The pulpit and font were also designed by Fenning and Stoneham.

The church is constructed of coursed and snecked rusticated stone with freestone dressings and Westmorland slate roofs, except for the tower which has a wooden shingled roof. The plan comprises a chancel, a clerestoried nave with five-bay north and south lean-to aisles, a north-west tower, a west end narthex, a south-west porch, a north-east porch, a north-east chapel, and a south-east organ chamber with adjoining vestry.

The chancel features set-back buttresses and blind arcading beneath a large three-light Decorated-style traceried east window, flanked by one-light windows. The nave's north and south sides are divided into bays by pilaster buttresses, each bay containing pairs of trefoil-headed windows. The lean-to aisles have two-light Decorated-style traceried windows. A north-east porch with angle buttresses opens from the north aisle, with a simple moulded north doorway. The north-east chapel, set beneath its own roof, has three small high-set lancet windows within a blind arcade and a three-light traceried east window.

The north-west tower is particularly prominent, with angle buttresses incorporating gables and very long set-offs, a parapet of trefoil-headed arcading, and very tall paired lancet belfry windows with crocketted gables. A semi-circular south-west stair turret with pyramidal stone spirelet projects from the tower. Below the belfry stage is blind arcading, and a shallow north porch with a richly moulded doorway features nailhead ornament and nook shafts with shaft rings. The tower rises to a tall pyramidal roof topped with large square-section pinnacles with pyramidal finials. Similar pinnacles crown the nave and chancel.

The west end narthex contains lancet windows, while the west end of the nave has a three-light traceried window with a cusped rose in the head tracery, flanked by trefoil-headed lancets. A gabled south-west porch projects forward from the narthex, linking to the west end of the south aisle. The south-east organ chamber is gabled with a tall stone stack.

The interior preserves a moulded chancel arch on engaged shafts with bell capitals. The five-bay arcades have cylindrical piers with capitals carved with wind-blown stiff-leaf foliage; the western bays are lower and narrower. Both the chancel east and nave west walls are carved with blind arcading, which may survive from the 1870s church. The nave roof is a tie beam design with arched braces below the tie on short stone shafts and curved braces above; it is boarded and panelled, as are the aisle roofs and the timber-vaulted chancel roof.

The chancel features a circa 1930s gabled timber reredos flanked by timber panelling on the east wall, circa 1930s choir stalls with poppyhead finials, and mosaic paving. The east end bays of the aisles are screened with Gothic-style screens. The north-east chapel serves as a war memorial chapel and also commemorates the 1927 fire and records monuments lost in it.

The pulpit, designed in 1929, is polygonal timber decorated with blind Early English-style arcading on a stone stem with shafts. The font, also from 1929, has a deep octagonal stone bowl carved with blind tracery on an octagonal stem, with a timber Gothic font cover. Nave benches have square-headed ends decorated with trefoil-headed panels. The church contains an organ by Harrison and Harrison.

The original church was constructed in open fields and lies below the level of the roads, which were subsequently laid out. Fenning and Stoneham did not replicate the previous design, altering the arcades and the east window. Their blueprints for the 1929 design, including the pulpit and font, are preserved in the vestry.