Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints, Chitterne

This Anglican parish church was built in 1863 by architect T.H. Wyatt as a replacement for the medieval Church of All Saints that stood across the road and was demolished in 1877. The new church cost £2,404 and is regarded as a convincing study in the local architectural style.

The building is constructed of chequered flint and limestone with a tiled nave roof and Welsh slate aisle roofs. It comprises a west tower over the entrance, a nave with lean-to aisles, a chancel, and a north vestry.

The three-stage tower has diagonal buttresses and string courses. The west entrance features a double-chamfered pointed archway with double planked doors and a square hoodmould. The north and south sides of the first and second stages contain cusped lancets. The west side of the second stage displays a three-light pointed Perpendicular window with a circular clockface above. The bellstage has two-light mullioned louvres with pointed lights and a string course decorated with gargoyles leading to a battlemented parapet.

The west ends of the aisles contain three-light Perpendicular windows. The south aisle has two two-light square-headed windows with cusped lights, a 15th-century three-light window with ogee cusped lights, and a pair of 14th-century ogee cusped lights to the right, all reset from the Church of St Mary. A clerestory with four two-light windows with cusped lights runs along the south side, and the east end of the aisle has three-light pointed windows.

The chancel features a two-light 19th-century Perpendicular window to the south and a polygonal east end with three two-light windows. A vestry on the north side has an ashlar stack and two-light windows with a chamfered doorway with curved corners. The north aisle contains one two-light and one three-light 15th-century window with cusped lights to the left, and a 14th-century three-light window with ogee cusping to the right, all transferred from the demolished Church of All Saints. A 19th-century gabled porch with double chamfered pointed doorway stands to the right.

Interior

The entrance in the tower opens through a tall double-chamfered tower arch to the nave, where a 19th-century wooden screen stands. The nave has a flagstone floor and a four-bay deep-arch-braced collar truss roof on moulded stone corbels, with plainer collar trusses to the half-bays. Four-bay arcades to the aisles have double-chamfered pointed arches on octagonal piers; the lean-to roofs have exposed rafters and principals on stone corbels.

A high pointed chancel arch, painted with a Biblical inscription above, leads to the chancel. Low sections of 15th-century stone screen with quatrefoils stand to either side. The chancel floor is laid with polychrome tiles and the roof is an arch-braced polygonal form on corbels.

Fittings

A 12th-century cylindrical stone font at the west end of the nave was brought from the Church of St Mary, with a wooden cover made in 1767 by James Townsend. A 17th-century carved wooden polygonal pulpit on a 19th-century stone base, also from the Church of St Mary, is also present. The chancel and nave contain 19th-century seating. A plaster relief Royal Arms of 1863 hangs over the tower arch.

The chancel stained glass is by Cox Sons, Buckley and Co., dating to 1900. The east window of the south aisle contains 1914–18 war memorial stained glass by Humphries, Jackson and Amble of Manchester.

A collection of 18th- and 19th-century memorial tablets is preserved in the tower, including a large white marble tablet to Charles Michell (died 1704, erected 1749), a marble tablet to Commodore Matthew Michell (died 1752) with a relief-carved ship on the apron, and a marble tablet with a woman and an urn to Phillis Rooke (died 1795).