Church Of St Allen (Alleyne)

Church of St Allen (formerly listed as the Parish Church of St Alunus)

This is an Anglican parish church of the 12th to 15th centuries, built in killas and granite moorstone with slate roofs. The building comprises a nave and chancel in one, dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, with a parallel south aisle of almost full length added in the 15th century, and a 15th-century west tower built to the original nave. The nave was also refenestrated at the same time. A 15th-century south porch completes the plan.

The north door is blocked. The exterior shows late 12th and early 13th-century nook shafts with elementary stiff-leaf capitals and a round arch with chamfer enriched with nailheads, all possibly reset. A lancet window is present in the north chancel wall. The north nave wall and south aisle have 15th-century three-light foiled windows. The east window contains four lights, replicated in the 19th century in the east window of the aisle, now the vestry. The south door has a moulded four-centred arch with a corbel over it, and different mouldings to the porch arch. The inner doorway is simply chamfered, with an 18th-century fielded panelled door.

The west tower rises in three stages with set-back buttresses. The moulded west door is deeply set in thick walls with hood moulding, and a three-light panel traceried window sits above it. A part-octagonal stair tower in the north-east corner rises to a crenellated tower above the main crenellated parapet, terminating in a conical spirelet. Two-light bell openings light the tower. The porch has cross-crested ridge tiles. Lead spouting adjacent south of the tower has moulded arms, initials and the date 1705.

Internally, the nave is plastered. A standard Cornish granite arcade of six bays divides the space. The piers consist of four attached shafts divided by hollow chamfers, with shafts rising to small capitals and four-centred depressed arches. East of the eastern arch, the jamb of the former south lancet of the chancel is interrupted by the last bay of the arcade, and a piscina is partly covered by a medieval or early post-medieval rebuild of the east chancel wall further to the west. The east wall bears some early plaster painted with a red band around the east window, and two slots, probably from removed corbels, sit either side of the window. A boarded wagon roof dates from the 19th century. The aisle is similarly plastered and ceiled. The tower base is raised over four steps with a corbelled reveal and single chamfered supporting arch.

The font is an octagonal granite example with a large chamfer returning the octagonal bowl to square; it was recut and remounted in the 19th century. It has an ogee oak cover of the 17th century with a ball finial, enclosed in an effective early 19th-century balustrade with narrow pointed arches between balusters. The pulpit is a simple 19th-century panelled piece. The reader's desk has a front dating from around 1570-1600, panelled and carved, with three flat consoles. A communion table of oak with turned legs and stretchers, now placed by the south door, is of similar age. An organ occupies the east end of the aisle.

Monuments are distributed throughout the church. On the north wall are a white marble tablet on grey slate field dated to the 18th century, corniced with a crest and scrolls, by Edgecombe of Truro, commemorating the Reverend Edward Tippett MA who died in 1840 and his wife; a limestone slab to the Reverend Buckland who died in 1780; a white marble wall monument in a limestone frame to Mary Morris (died 1862), the Reverend George Morris, and their children; a slate slab of 1922; and three 19th-century brasses. On the north wall of the nave is a white marble tablet on grey with a pascal lamb panel on top, lettered to William Bennetts of Engilley who died in 1835 and family. The south wall of the aisle bears a corniced marble tablet on slate to the Reverend Peter Gurney and children, erected in 1823 by Edgecombe, and a simple tablet to the child John Rowe Nicholas who died in 1826. The north wall displays painted and framed royal arms of Charles II dated 1660, and a Persian carpet with three major stripes and a pear field.

The stained glass includes an east window of 1862 to the Lanyon family, a north window of 1889 by Moore of London, and a second window of 1909-10.

Historically, the living was appropriated by the Bishop of Exeter to Glasney College in 1287 and is now held by the bishop's chaplain. Alexander Barclay, a poet and theologian who lived from 1495-6 to 1552 and authored the English version of The Ship of Fools, was appointed vicar in 1530-31.