Anglican Church of All Saints

The Church of All Saints is an Anglican parish church with a 13th-century west tower and spire added in 1824. The remainder of the church was rebuilt by Medland and Son in 1876–7 in a mainly Early English style.

The church is constructed from coursed and dressed local limestone with freestone dressings, roofed in stone slate. It comprises a west tower, nave with north aisle and chapel, south porch and aisle, and chancel.

The 13th-century west tower rises in three stages and is rendered, with the stages articulated by string courses. Flat angle buttresses with offsets rise into the third stage. The only entrance to the tower is a pointed-arched doorway on the west side with single shafts and moulded capitals, from which springs a filleted arch. Two mass dials are incised on the southwest buttress. The second stage is blind except for a small lancet in the south side. The four sides of the third stage have variously single and paired openings with round and straight heads, some with louvres. The belfry houses a peal of six bells. The parapet has a heavily moulded cornice, and the plain recessed spire is surmounted by a cross.

The body of the church has coped verges and moulded kneelers to the roofs, with a cross finial to the east end. The south side has a high plinth. The south porch has a late 13th-century pointed-arched entrance with paired shafts and a trefoil-headed image niche above. The south doorway within has a semi-circular arch with chevrons and a roll moulding springing from single shafts; above it is inserted part of a probably 12th-century coffin slab with an incised cross. The south aisle has two Perpendicular windows with hood moulds, below which a moulded band extends around the aisle and its buttresses, one straight and the other angled at the southeast corner. The east end of the aisle has a four-light Perpendicular window with a hood mould. The chancel has a single lancet with hood mould and a straight buttress with gabled head. The north aisle is formed from paired gabled cross wings, each with a three-light plate-tracery window, with a squat buttress with offset between them. To their left is a high gabled transeptal chapel, now used as a vestry, with a simple pointed doorway and rose window in the gable; it has an elaborate triple-lancet east window. The chancel to the north is of two bays, each with a single lancet as to the south, with similar buttressing. To the east end is a three-light Early English window of triple lancets.

Interior

The interior of the porch has a blocked opening that formerly gave on to the south aisle, a moulded pointed archway with single shafts and simple capitals over paired trefoil-headed lancets, later blocked with squared and coursed stone. The interior of the church has polychrome tiled floors by William Godwin of Lugwardine, Herefordshire, plastered walls and timber wagon roofs with scissor-bracing in the nave and porch. The style is Early English, except for the south (Ewen) aisle, which is Perpendicular. The north aisle arcade of painted arches is carried on squat shafts with simple moulded capitals and has moulded label stops to the imposts at the end of the arcade, as does the arch to the north transept. The south aisle has a single archway rather than an arcade, with similar detailing. On the west wall are several monuments dating from before the 1870s rebuilding, including several to members of the Coxe family.

The south aisle was built using stone from the demolished church at nearby Ewen. It contains a good 12th–13th-century sedilia, Early English in style: a two-bay recess with one narrower bay. Each arch has a three-roll trefoil on semi-circular capitals and attached shafts with annulets and bases. The spandrel between the arches is occupied by a deeply-cut quatrefoil. Alongside the sedilia is a 14th-century arched tomb recess with deeply and richly moulded chamfered arch with crocketed labels and unusual cusping bearing carved heads. The arch springs from half shafts on bases, with capitals formed from human heads—that to the east with two female heads and that to the west a single male head. The recess may have originally included the effigy of a knight now in the north transept, where it was moved in the 1877 rebuilding. Currently, the recess houses a complete medieval stone coffin with a coped lid. The north transept chapel is now used as a vestry. Under a pointed arch, blocked when the north aisle was built, stands an effigy. At the southeast corner are the remains of a 15th-century rood stair.

The high pointed chancel arch has two orders with a chamfered hood mould with plain stops. The impost is supported in truncated half-columns with simple mouldings to the capitals. The chancel ceiling is boarded, with applied timber ribs having foliate bosses at their junctions. The three-light east window is Early English in style, with single shafts between the lancets, and contains modern stained glass. The reredos of 1877 is tile, with inscriptions of the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, by Maw and Co of Shropshire.

Principal Fittings

The font in the north aisle is a 14th-century octagonal piece with moulding to the stem, on a low 19th-century base and apron. The cover is of the 1870s. The pulpit, timber with tracery on a moulded stone base, dates from 1872. The priest's stall on the south side of the chancel is a good late Arts and Crafts piece designed by Norman Jewson and made in 1937 by Peter Waals of Chalford, given in memory of Aneurin Gabe Jones, who was vicar from 1914 to 1935. The bench pews are of 1877. The mahogany organ case in the south aisle dates from 1784, by John England and Hugh Russell, with later alterations; it has a broken pediment above a moulded cornice with dentil frieze. It was found in a chapel in Cam, Gloucestershire, and brought to Kemble in the 1960s, given in memory of his wife by S J Phillips. A few fragments of medieval stained glass survive in the east window of the south aisle; otherwise, apart from the east window in the chancel, the glass is plain and diamond-patterned, of circa 1877. The bell frame was renewed in 1905–6, and a new bell added to the existing peal of four, dating from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. A further bell was added in 1953.

Principal Monuments

In the north transept is a 14th-century effigy of a knight, cross-legged, carved in low relief in lias stone, with a trefoiled canopy over the head, similar to that on the recess in the south aisle; the effigy may be that of Sir Roger Normaund, who died in 1349. Above it is a painted timber monument to Beata Pitt (d. 1650) and her son Edward (d. 1656). The remaining monuments of note were all resited on the west wall during the 1870s restoration. The monument to Elizabeth Coxe (d. 1783), by Ricketts of Gloucester, is of white and grey marble with an urn, volutes and heraldic devices. Ann Coxe's monument of 1790, by John and Joseph Bryan of Painswick and Gloucester, has a draped urn and heraldry. Charles Coxe (d. 1808) has a Greek Revival monument by Reeves and Son of Bath.

Subsidiary Features

The churchyard has three entrances. To the west is a pair of fat square gate piers of ashlar limestone with tapers to the top and octagonal pointed caps; between them is a simple iron overthrow with a central lamp and double timber gates.