Church Of All Saints

CHURCH OF ALL SAINTS

A large late Gothic Revival church built 1913-14, designed by J. Oldrid Scott & Son and C.T. Miles. The porch-tower base dates from 1956-69. Located at Castlemain Avenue, West Southbourne.

The church is constructed of coursed and dressed Purbeck limestone with honey-coloured limestone dressings and red tiled roofs, some with leading on ancillary parts.

The plan comprises a six-bay nave with lean-to aisles, a west narthex, a porch-tower at the north-west corner, a chancel with a north chapel and south organ loft, and vestries beneath the east end. An intended four-stage tower at the north-west was never built.

The exterior presents a large and rather conservative design. The tracery is Flamboyant, notably in the dominant six-light west window, which has two sub-arches of three lights with a central mullion rising to the apex of the arch. Between the head of the window and the gable is a stepped-up string course. The clerestory features coped buttresses and three-light windows with simpler intersecting tracery. The chancel displays a chequerwork eaves frieze, echoed in simpler alternating block friezes on the north chapel and clerestory. On the site of the intended tower at the north-west, a large porch was built in 1956, with a plain and boxy second stage added in 1969 featuring quatrefoils in the parapet. Big diagonal buttresses suggest the tower plan was still considered viable in 1956, though the porch barely rises above the aisle roofs.

The interior features a long, high nave with a timbered tie-beam roof with lean king-posts. The nave arcades have circular piers, octagonal moulded capitals, and double-chamfered arches. In the spandrels between the nave arches are quirky cusped dagger motifs, a design used earlier at St John the Evangelist, Boscombe. The higher chancel arch rests on angel corbels. The chancel is relatively short but quite high, with small side windows positioned very high up. The roof is boarded and without tie-beams. On the south are two high arches opening into the organ loft with a central pier as in the nave, the responds dying into the walls. Two similar arches on the north open into the chapel. The floors are tiled, with cast-iron heating grilles lining the aisles.

Principal fixtures include an elaborate font on eight octagonal colonettes of green marble, given around 1913, with the bowl featuring rectangular panels with carving and a tall ogee-curved oak font cover. The oak pulpit has a densely carved tester with pinnacles at the angles. The oak chancel and sanctuary fittings are largely contemporary with the building in the late Perpendicular style, including parclose screens to the north and south, excellent choir stalls with panelled fronts pierced with alternating squares and long narrow panels each featuring Flamboyant tracery, and a priest's stall with a high canopy in the sanctuary. The reredos has a gilded frame with riddel posts and standing angels. Upholstered seating in the nave was given in 1996, and shortly after the east end of the nave was reordered with a nave altar and simple iron-and-oak rails.

The stained glass in the east window is a war memorial designed by Percy Bacon and installed in 1921, depicting the King of Kings surrounded by angels, prophets, and at the bottom, the patron saints of the Allied nations. Three windows in the north chapel are signed by Bacon, dating from around 1921-7, and one in the baptistery from 1926. Two aisle windows of the 1930s are possibly also his work.

An unlisted church hall designed by architect Max Cross was attached at the north-east in 1973-5.

All Saints was established as a High Church daughter church of St James, Pokesdown. Its first building of 1902 was an iron hut, which later became a church hall on the south side. The permanent church was designed by J. Oldrid Scott in conjunction with C.T. Miles of Bournemouth, who also designed St John the Evangelist, Christchurch Road, Boscombe (1893-5) and St Andrew, Florence Road, Boscombe (1907-8). However, a working drawing for All Saints in the RIBA collection is signed by T.G. Jackson, 1913. The church was built at a cost of £16,000 by builder A. White Bowman. Percy Bacon's original drawing for the east window was given to the church by his widow in 1936. The parish's legal title is All Saints, Pokesdown (since 31 July 1930), though it is usually known as All Saints, West Southbourne. The proposed tower (original design reproduced in Strickland) was never executed.

John Oldrid Scott (1841-1913) was the son of the great Victorian architect Sir George Gilbert Scott and younger brother of George Gilbert Scott Junior. He began practice in 1863 in London and specialised in church work. Charles Thomas Miles (1852-1930) was the son of a Bournemouth builder. He was articled to architect Dugald McPhail of Shaftesbury from 1864-7, worked in the offices of Parken & Creeke from 1867-9, then with his father from 1869-72. He became an assistant to A.H. Parken in 1872 and set up on his own in 1875, becoming a Fellow of the RIBA in 1895. He worked in partnership with his son S.C. Miles (born 1877) from 1909.