Church Of All Saints

CHURCH OF ALL SAINTS

A parish church on Marazion Fore Street, built in 1861 to a design by Piers St Aubyn, with a north aisle added as a later addition to the original scheme. The building is constructed of granite rubble walls with dressed granite copings, quoins, doorways, windows and other architectural features. The roofs are finished in Delabole slate with decorated slate verges to the gable ends of the three main parallel roofs and to the porch and vestry roofs which run at right angles to the main block.

The church follows a traditional planned layout with a nave and apsidal-ended chancel separated by a chancel arch. North and south aisles, linked to the nave by four-bay arcades, flank the nave. A north porch stands at the west end of the north aisle, whilst a vestry projects at right angles from the east end of the south aisle. Substantial external buttresses reinforce the corners of the north and south ends of the church and the arcade ends at the west. A bellcote, positioned over the north-west corner of the north aisle and buttressed onto the porch wall and to the west, is rendered in Decorated Gothic style.

The exterior rises on a double plinth to tall elevations. The windows are mullioned with trefoil-headed lights and coloured leaded glass, with hoodmoulds over the pointed arched openings.

The north wall contains three bays plus the porch on the right, featuring a complex moulded ordered doorway leading to a coped gable end with a cruciform apex. Two-light windows with quatrefoils above light this elevation.

The south wall has four bays, each with a window similar to those on the north wall.

The west wall is dominated by three steep gable ends, each containing a three-light window with Decorated style tracery. The nave gable and its window are slightly taller than the flanking aisle gables. On the left stands a tall buttressed bellcote with weathered offsets and a granite ashlar bell cradle featuring a traceried bell opening and steep weathered gable above. The left-hand side of the bellcote is integral with the west wall of the porch.

The east wall features a central apsidal chancel projection between the north and south aisle gables. The round-ended chancel is lit by five single lights at its east end, whilst the aisle gables contain windows matching those at the west end.

The interior contains four-bay Portland stone arcades with octagonal piers and pointed arches between the nave and aisles. A pointed chancel arch is carried on corbelled imposts. The roof structures are arch-braced, with the nave roof also featuring curved wind braces. The floor throughout is laid in black and brown earthenware tiles, with the whole interior surviving substantially as originally constructed.

Fittings include a granite font in Norman style, with four corner shafts; pitch pine pews, each numbered with a Roman numeral; and an octagonal pulpit with Gothic style tracery.

The windows throughout contain coloured glass, many of standard late 19th-century type, though several are notably striking. The north aisle north windows commemorate Nicholas Bowden (1761–1850) and his wife Mary (1761–1846); Elizabeth, wife of Major General J.H.B. Longden (1799–1875); and Joseph Longden (1774–1847) and his wife Jane (1773–1846). The east window of the north aisle depicts the Crucifixion, whilst the west window shows Jesus with children. The west nave window commemorates Richard Wellington and his family, including his son Richard, a metallurgist. The south aisle south windows feature memorials to the St Aubyn family, with one window depicting the construction of a church and dedicated to J Piers St Aubyn, the architect of this building and much other work in Cornwall (1815–1875). The west window of the south aisle depicts Jesus travelling to Jerusalem.

This church represents one of Piers St Aubyn's more successful buildings.