Church Of All Saints

The Church of All Saints is a village church dating from 1872, designed by CE Giles in the Early English Gothic style. A western vestry block was added in 1967. The church is located on the edge of Hordle Village, adjacent to a 19th-century former school. It is constructed of English bond red brick with stone bands and dressings, with some blue brick banding, and has a slate roof with original coloured slate bands and crested ridge tiles. The plan consists of a nave, chancel, a northeast organ chamber/vestry block, and an unfinished southwest tower.

The Chancel has a triple lancet east window featuring shafts with carved capitals and carved roundels in the spandrels. The nave is buttressed with grouped lancet windows. The unfinished tower has set-back buttresses, a polygonal southwest stair turret, and a richly-moulded south doorway with nook shafts, stiff-leaf capitals, and a sexfoil above. The upper stage of the tower is louvered below a low pyramidal roof. The western window, partly obscured by the 1967 addition, comprises two paired lancets with trefoil plate tracery in the heads and a roundel in the gable. The organ chamber/vestry block is buttressed and features lancet windows and a north doorway.

The interior has whitened brick walls with stone bands. A tall triple-moulded chancel arch features engaged shafts with stiff-leaf capitals. The nave has a canted timber roof with diagonal boarding behind the rafters, while the chancel roof is coved with a trefoil profile and a frieze of pierced arches above the wallplate. The east window includes a cusped internal arch and shafts with stiff-leaf capitals. A five-bay reredos has carved gabled canopies on squat, polished marble columns; the central bay depicts a sculpted figure of Christ in Glory, with symbols of the evangelists in mosaic on the flanking bays. An attractive aumbry/piscina/sedilia ensemble is located in the southeast corner of the chancel. The organ case is attractively painted, and the choir stalls have shaped ends with a pierced frieze frontals. A polygonal stone pulpit features pietra dura panels under gables. The font has a commemoration date of 1870, with an octagonal bowl and carved sides. Nave benches have rounded shouldered ends. Other furnishings include a brass eagle lectern, dated 1882, 19th- and 20th-century stained glass, brass wall plaques, and stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops.

The church is notable as a competent Gothic Revival village church by CE Giles, with attractive contemporary chancel fittings and an unusual painted organ case. The group value is enhanced by its adjacency to the former church school. The church’s significance is diminished slightly by the later 1967 extension to the west end, which is not of special interest.