Church of All Saints and Lychgate

Church of All Saints and Lychgate

This is an Anglican parish church of mixed date. The tower and Benett Chapel date from the 14th and 15th centuries, whilst the remainder of the building was rebuilt in 1838–40 by William Walker of Shaftesbury. The church underwent restoration in the late 19th century and further repairs in the late 20th century.

The building is constructed of Tisbury limestone ashlar under a fishscale tiled roof. The church is orientated west to east and comprises a nave, chancel, south chapel, north-east vestry, south-east organ chamber, west tower and north porch.

The three-stage west tower dates from the 14th and 15th centuries and has a moulded plinth and diagonal buttresses. Its west side features a blocked Tudor-arched doorway with an inserted tablet to John Twogood, who died in 1663, above which is a three-light Perpendicular window. The second stage has a two-light cusped square-headed window with hoodmould, whilst the offset bellstage has two-light cusped square-headed louvred windows. A string course runs to the battlemented parapet with corner gargoyles. The stair turret on the north side has loopholes, a chamfered top with battlemented parapet and gargoyles, and a short spire. The 19th-century gabled porch has diagonal buttresses and coped verges with a cross finial, a moulded pointed doorway with attached shafts and a hoodmould. The north side of the nave has four two-light trefoiled square-headed windows with hoodmoulds. The 19th-century gabled vestry to the east has a chamfered pointed doorway to its west wall and two-light Perpendicular-style and 16th-century-style windows with hoodmoulds to the north and east respectively. The north and south sides of the chancel each have a two-light trefoiled square-headed window with hoodmould. The east end has diagonal buttresses and a three-light Perpendicular-style window with pointed hoodmould. The projecting organ chamber on the south side has a blind two-light pointed Perpendicular window. The Benett chapel also has diagonal buttresses, with an east window of two-light pointed geometric style and a three-light pointed Perpendicular window to the south. Attached to the south wall of the chapel is a low vault with stone-slate roof and a blocked segmental arched opening to the south, forming the mausoleum of the Benett family; its roof has collapsed. The south side of the nave has two two-light trefoiled square-headed windows and a matching single-light window.

Inside, the porch has an arch-braced, collar-rafter roof and a pointed inner doorway with chamfering. The nave has a 19th-century six-bay roof with cusped, arch-braced collar trusses rising from carved corbels and herringbone boarding; the internal walls are plastered. The timber pulpit and nave benches are of standard design and probably belong to the restoration of 1863; two frontals with poppy heads may survive from the original 19th-century seating plan. The baluster stone font is 18th-century. Plain marble tablets in the nave commemorate members of the Eliot family. The tower has a double-chamfered arch and its first floor retains a fireplace with chamfered jambs and a lintel carved with rosettes. Three bells were recorded at Norton in 1553, one of which survives and is believed to have been cast in Bristol in the late 14th century; there are now five in total. A plain chamfered arch leads to the chancel, which has a polychrome tiled floor. A 19th-century sedilia with pointed-arched heads is set against the south wall, a pointed cupboard on the north wall, and simple altar rails are present. A chamfered pointed doorway leads into the vestry. The chancel roof is similar to that in the nave. The organ, on the south side of the chancel, is dated 1867 and is by William Sweetman of Bath. The stained glass in the east window depicts the Crucifixion and is characteristic of the 1840s; the west window dates from 1863.

The Benett chapel, on the south side of the nave, has a 14th-century chamfered pointed archway on chamfered and roll-moulded responds set with a pair of late-17th-century wrought-iron gates. It has a three-bay hammer-beam roof with carved angels and cusped wind bracing with dentilled mouldings. The chapel retains a good collection of floor and wall monuments to members of the Benett family, including a brass to John Benett (died 1461) and his wife, and another on the west wall to Thomas Benett (died 1605) and his wife. Several Gothic and classical marble wall tablets are present, including one to Thomas Benett died 1653, and two classical revival wall monuments dated 1922 and 1947.

At the entrance to the churchyard, to the north-east of the church, stands a lych gate erected in 1893 as a memorial to family members buried in the churchyard. It has timber-framed sides resting on a stone plinth with stone capping, and a pair of timber gates. The hipped roof has plain and fishscale tiles and crested ridge tiles.