Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints, Langton Long Blandford

An Anglican rural parish church built in 1861 to a design by Thomas Henry Wyatt (1807-1880).

The church is constructed in flint with ashlar bonding courses and ashlar blocks, with slate roofs and gable stone copings. Its plan comprises a nave with chancel and north aisle, north and south transepts, a west tower and south porch.

The three-stage west tower features diagonal buttresses to the first two stages and an octagonal ashlar north side. It has weathered strings, an embattled parapet with crocketed pinnacles and string gargoyles. To the west, a two-light pointed Perpendicular style window lights the tower. The belfry is lit on all sides by square-headed, two-light Perpendicular style windows with returned labels. The main body of the church displays two- and three-light Perpendicular tracery windows with square and pointed heads.

The interior contains a two-bay, pointed, moulded arcade resting on octagonal piers with moulded caps and bases. The pointed and moulded transept arches feature moulded caps. The chancel has a panelled wagon roof, while the chancel arch is moulded, pointed, and has continuous jambs. The nave is covered by a quasi-hammer beam roof with arch-braced collars springing from carved corbels. The transepts have arch-braced collar beam roofs.

Many original 19th-century features survive, including the pews and stained glass. There is an open traceried pulpit on a stone base and an octagonal stone font with carved panelled sides set on a cylindrical pier with four marble sub-shafts. The church contains numerous 18th, 19th and 20th-century monuments, some reset and some in their original positions. A notable feature is a reset brass memorial plaque of 1457 commemorating John Whitewood and his first and second wives Joanna and Alicia, inscribed with black letters.

The church is set back from the main road to the north by a dwarf stone and flint wall topped with spearheaded railings. Entrance gates at its north-east corner are hung between square stone and flint piers with pyramidal caps. Set within the dwarf wall are several late 19th and 20th-century monuments in the form of small plaques in stone and marble.

The church was paid for by the Farquharsons, a local family. It has been suggested that the church occupies the site of a former parish church of uncertain date, and that the 1457 brass memorial to John Whitewood may derive from this earlier church, though no firm evidence supports this theory.

Thomas Henry Wyatt was a prominent Victorian architect who designed over 400 buildings, including more than 150 churches, many of which are listed heritage buildings. One of his most celebrated works is the Grade I listed Church of St Mary and St Nicholas at Wilton, designed for the Earls of Pembroke between 1840 and 1845 in Lombardic style. During the 1860s and 1870s, Wyatt was particularly prolific, designing numerous estate and parish churches throughout England, predominantly in the Gothic Revival style.