Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints, Idmiston

Redundant Anglican parish church of the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, restored in 1866-7 by J.L. Pearson. Built of flint with interspersed limestone and limestone dressings. The chancel and porch are tiled, while the nave and aisles are lead-covered. The church consists of a nave with north and south aisles, a clasping west tower, a two-storey north porch, and a chancel.

The windows feature cinquefoiled square heads: three-light to the nave, three-light to the clerestory, all with label moulds. A notable earlier Perpendicular window with three lights and panelled tracery exists to the east of the south aisle. The 13th-century chancel has a north door and lancets, with three closely spaced lancets at the east end. The nave and aisles have ashlar parapets with a cavetto string at the base, interrupted by carved stone hopper heads. The north porch displays a four-centred arch with quatrefoiled spandrels and a label with facetted drop terminals. A two-light window serves the parvise above, topped by a gable wheel cross. The 12th-century tower has pilaster buttresses without offsets; the upper section was rebuilt in the 19th century with three simple bell openings on each side and a shingled pyramidal spire. The tower's west window has two lights. Crude uninterpreted incisions appear on the chancel quoins, and a bench mark is visible on the tower.

The interior reveals an inner north door with a four-centred arch and quatrefoiled spandrels. The 13th-century nave replaced a presumed 12th-century unaisled nave and contains an arcade of two bays with two chamfered order arches on clustered columns with round capitals and raised bases, constructed in alternating contrasting Hurdcott and Chilmark stones. A high door to the rood screen is positioned on the south side. The roof spans three bays in the 15th century, featuring moulded and traceried brackets on large carved corbels, tie beams, and a moulded ridge piece, purlins and intermediate principal rafters. The north aisle has a piscina and a similar 15th-century roof on fine corbels, reflecting a major building phase that involved widening the aisles and raising the nave. The south aisle has a simpler roof and a piscina on its north side. The chancel roof is a 19th-century trussed rafter roof with scissor braces. A small piece of torus moulding from the earliest phase survives over a built-in pilaster buttress on the north side of the tower.

Fittings include a 19th-century Bath stone pulpit with a ballflower cornice and carved panels. The medieval font is an octagonal bowl of Purbeck limestone on a step with a stand for the officiant. An altar rail of mahogany on iron supports, a reading desk, and pews are all 19th-century; the pews feature simple iron candlesticks with brass ornament.

The monuments are extensive. In the chancel, the north side contains a Carrara marble tablet with a cornice-shaped top and curved apron to the Reverend John Bowle, died 1788. The south side has a Carrara wall tablet with supporting scrolls, a cornice with finials and central coloured shield, and an apron with acanthus leaves, commemorating Elizabeth, wife of Reverend J. Bowle, died 1759. Three further tablets honour Elisabeth Bowle (daughter of the first, died 1769), Richard Bowle (son of the Bishop of Rochester, died 1678), and another Reverend J. Bowle (died 1836, with white tablet on grey, pyramid and arms supported on mutules).

In the north aisle, four wall monuments stand at the east end: a slate tablet in a limestone architrave with a broken pediment clasping mantled arms and crowned feathers in the apron, to Mary Chaundler, died 1680. At the west end are marble tablets to John Andrews of Porton (died 1766), Christian Clemens (died 1754), and Reverend Thomas Clemens (died 1747). In the south aisle's west wall stands a 17th-century monument: a niche flanked by red marbled columns carrying an entablature crowned by mantled and crested arms. Within the niche is a cloaked figure of Giles Rowbach, died 1633, kneeling before an open book on a stand.