Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

A small Gothic church built in 1869 to the design of J.L. Pearson, one of the greatest 19th-century church architects. The church was commissioned as a gift from Mortimer Ricardo, the main landowner and retired army Captain (son of the economist David Ricardo), whose house, Bure Homage House, stands opposite and is now the Christchurch Harbour Hotel. The church opened on 13 June 1869 and served as a chapel of ease to Christchurch parish church until its formal dedication to All Saints on 27 September 1931. At the time of its construction, Mudeford was an isolated fishing community about one and a half miles from the town of Christchurch.

The building is constructed of red brick with stone dressings and banded tiled roofs. It is a modest structure seating only 120 people, comprising a nave with a small apsidal sanctuary. The nave has a single roof span with a bellcote on the east gable. The west window contains simple lancet tracery in three lights, while the side windows are single lancets or grouped lights beneath square heads. The apse is lit by three uncusped single lancets. An attractive south porch of brick and timber with tiled roof provides the main entrance; the openings in the timber frame have been glazed with Perspex.

The interior walls are whitewashed and the floor is carpeted. The nave roof is constructed of dark stained timbers with collar-beam and braces forming a seven-section canted profile. The roof above the apse is boarded and painted with patterned ribs. Two arched openings in the north wall—the easternmost probably serving as the organ chamber—provide access to the interior, with the western opening connecting via a timber and glass partition to the hall and rooms added in 1991.

The church contains several principal fixtures. A Perpendicular-style octagonal font dating from 1885 features blind traceried panels on the bowl and an arcaded stem. The pulpit, a simple panelled oak piece, dates from 1950. There is a brass lectern from 1912 and an altar rail of 1991. Plain bench pews were installed in 1936. The stained glass is of particular note: three east windows are signed by Heaton, Butler & Bayne, with the central light dated 1918 and the flanking lights added later. The west window is in memory of Mortimer Ricardo, who died in 1876. Minor Late Victorian glass appears in the nave south window, and a three-light window of 1962 is located in the nave north. In the associated hall is a circular window commemorating a benefactor to the church, created by Rita-Jean Peters around 1987.

A church hall by architect Richard Scott was added in 1991 in contextual red brick, situated parallel with the nave on its north side with a gable as substantial as the nave's west gable but projecting further west. A Sunday school room dates from around 1960. Both the hall and Sunday school room are excluded from the listing.

John Loughborough Pearson (1817–97) trained in the offices of Ignatius Bonomi in Durham and Anthony Salvin and Philip Hardwick in London, beginning his own practice in 1843. He was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1880 and designed many exceptionally fine churches, often displaying strong French influence; his most celebrated work is Truro Cathedral, begun in 1880. The Mudeford commission, however, offered Pearson no scope for spatial or other architectural expression, being a modest chapel-like structure for an isolated community.