Church Of All Saints

Church of All Saints

A large parish church built between 1832 and 1835 to designs by Charles Frederick Inwood in Perpendicular style, with substantial later additions by John Oldrid Scott. The chancel was added in 1875-6, the nave remodelled with 6-bay arcades in 1881-2, the nave re-roofed in 1889, and the upper part of the tower and spire rebuilt in 1898-99.

The Inwood phase is constructed in buff Staffordshire brick with Bath stone dressings, whilst Scott's work employs knapped flint with stone dressings and some chequered flushwork decoration. The roofs are tiled.

The plan comprises a nave and chancel with north and south aisles under gabled roofs, a north-east organ chamber and south-east chapel, and a west tower with west end narthex.

The church is prominently sited beside the Thames, adjacent to Marlow's noted suspension bridge. The design displays two distinct architectural phases: Inwood's pre-Victorian brick body and Scott's late Victorian flushwork tower and spire. The west end features Inwood's narthex with three bays broken forward and divided by buttresses, a parapet screen decorated with blind quatrefoils, and tall narrow chamfered doorways. The central bay has an ogee arch decorated with crockets in a late Georgian manner. To north and south the narthex has narrow two-light traceried windows with transoms. The tower rises above with angle buttresses terminating in pinnacles, clock-faces in sunk moulded frames, and large three-light transomed belfry windows with a flushwork frieze below a pierced parapet. Above this sits an elegant stone spire with miniature flying buttresses decorated with crockets. The buttressed brick aisles display a mixture of narrow transomed windows and three-light windows with Decorated style tracery, with toothed quoins proud of the wall plane and square projecting blocks below the sills. The chancel, added by Scott in 1875-6, has diagonal buttresses and Decorated style traceried windows recessed under stone arches.

The interior is finely proportioned and spacious following Scott's interventions. A moulded chancel arch with nook shafts leads to a lower chancel. The six-bay arcades (five bays to the nave) feature quatrefoil piers with moulded capitals and richly-moulded arches. The nave has a good open arch-braced roof, boarded and canted with braces on moulded stone corbels; the aisles have crown-post and tie-beam roofs. This roofing was added by Scott in 1889. The chancel has a canted boarded chancel roof, panelled and painted.

The reredos of 1876 by Scott comprises a triptych of marbles with outer wings and a central panel with triple gable containing tiled panels of the crucifixion. The chancel walls have a timber dado with blind arcading and cresting. The sanctuary features an encaustic tiled floor and painted metal and timber sanctuary rail. The choir stalls have shaped ends and open traceried frontals with pendants. Late 19th and early 20th-century timber parclose screens divide the south-east chapel. The font has a deep stone bowl decorated with crosses on a base with marble shafts, and an unusually tall polygonal font cover with ogival spire.

An unusually large and elaborate stone and marble pulpit of 1863 by George Gilbert Street is integral with the low coped stone chancel screen. It comprises a round, open arcaded enclosure in two stages with an arcaded ring of polished limestone shafts (serpentine and Plymouth marble) standing on a lower stage carried on four shafts of pink sandstone. Nave bench ends have wavy tops. An impressive run of Victorian stained-glass windows is present, mostly by Burlisson and Grylls, including five in the chancel of 1876, with one window by Kempe. A good war memorial window is located in the north aisle.

Many wall monuments are present, several of particular interest. The oldest commemorates William and Ketheryne Willoughby and family, died 1597, with small kneeling figures facing each other over a prayer desk set within a Corinthian frame with strapwork. That to Sir Miles Hobart MP (died 1632, apparently paid for in 1647 by the House of Commons, unusually) comprises a half-length frontal bust between curtains with a relief below the apron depicting his death in a coaching accident. Other monuments are by Nollekens and Westmacott junior. A Father Willis organ of 1876 has been rebuilt and overhauled several times since.

The present church was commenced shortly after the opening of Marlow's suspension bridge by William Tierney Clark in 1831. Designed in a characteristic late Georgian manner and built of brick, it represents a clearly pre-Tractarian design to which numerous additions were made later in the 19th century, including the ritual addition of a chancel and the replacement of Inwood's wide trussed-roof interior with a more conventional aisled arrangement which removed the galleries as well (documented in a photograph of 1877 in the National Monuments Record). Charles Frederick Inwood (1798-1840), the second son of the well-known Neoclassical architect William Inwood, showed drawings for All Saints at the Royal Academy in 1832 and 1834. John Oldrid Scott (1841-1913), a younger son of Sir George Gilbert Scott, was a distinguished church architect in his own right, responsible for a very large number of restorations, and as Oxford Diocesan Architect from 1881 had strong local connections.