Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

Parish church of Grade I listed status. The building displays features mainly of the 15th or early 16th century, with a substantial 1873 restoration by Ashworth, though undoubtedly earlier fabric survives in the nave and chancel. The nave and chancel are built of small shale rubble, the south aisle of stone rubble, and the tower of roughly dressed stone blocks. Dressed stone quoins and ashlar dressings are used throughout. Slate roofs with gable ends cover the structure. The building comprises a west tower, nave, chancel, and south aisle.

The west tower is of three stages with setback buttresses with offsets. It is topped by a crenellated parapet featuring small corner obelisk pinnacles and a moulded stone cornice with grotesque gargoyles at each corner, to the centre of each face, and at each angle of the polygonal stair turret to the north side. The bell-openings are 4-centred arches with dressed stone voussoirs of 2 hollow-chamfered lights with louvres to each side. A straight-headed window on the south side of the second stage has 2 trefoil-headed lights with small diamond leaded cames. The 15th or early 16th century Perpendicular west window comprises 3 lights with cavetto mullions above a 4-centred arched double hollow-chamfered west doorway with hoodmould, which now carries a 19th-century plank door.

The south aisle features 4 straight-headed Perpendicular windows of 3 cavetto-mullioned 4-centred arched lights with hoodmoulds. A projecting plinth with horizontal ashlar capping forms a kind of raised walkway to the right side of the porch and runs around to the east end of the south aisle. The gabled south porch has a 19th-century doorway with nookshafts and moulded surround. Within the porch, a plastered barrel-vaulted ceiling rests on plain moulded timber wall-plates. The round-arched south doorway carries a moulded surround and an ancient semi-circular-headed door of 2 wide studded planks secured by wrought-iron straps and ledged with an ancient lock. A slate sundial on the south wall of the south aisle is dated 1717 with churchwardens' initials. At the east end are 2 19th-century Perpendicular-style windows with pointed arches, 3 lights, and hoodmould. The north side displays 2 Perpendicular straight-headed windows of 3 4-centred arched lights, one with chamfered mullions and the other with cavetto mullions.

Interior

The interior features a 4-bay arcade with Pevsner 'B type' piers with foliated capitals removed from each end respond. The 2 outer piers have shields at the corners, that at the west end on the south side carved in the shape of a human head. Stone flag floors extend across the nave and chancel. Perpendicular ceiled wagon roofs cover the nave, south aisle, and chancel, with plain moulded ribs but no bosses. Crenellated wall-plates to the nave and chancel roofs are separated by a corbelled-out barrel-vaulted truss. A pointed triple hollow-chamfered west tower arch opens into the nave.

Three sections of the rood screen have been reused as part of the base of the partition closing off this arch. The central door panel is much renovated. Each section has 4 lights with foliated mouldings to the arches and surrounds. A Norman font features a zig-zag frieze to the top of its circular bowl with a later scalloped design added at the base, set on a circular stem with a recut base. Nave and chancel seating, pulpit, and a carved angel lectern date to the 19th century. The wooden reredos is early 20th century. A 19th-century segmental pointed-arched double sedilia features 2 cusped-headed arches divided by a central moulded pendant. The east window contains stained glass dated 1919.