Church Of All Saints

The Church of All Saints is a church principally of the 14th century, with significant additions and alterations made in the 15th century and a later south porch of 1895, erected in memory of Sir George Cayley. It is constructed of dressed sandstone with a slate roof.

The church comprises a 14th-century west tower, a 3-bay aisled nave, a 15th-century south aisle and chancel, and a north chapel. The tower has diagonal, offset buttresses and a vice on the north-east side. It contains a single light on its west face, with two square-headed lights on the second stage. The bell openings are double ogee-arched lights with pointed, stopped hood moulds. The tower is topped with an octagonal broach spire, featuring lucarnes and a weather vane. The embattled south porch has diagonal buttresses and a two-centred arched opening beneath a pointed hood mould, featuring a fine 15th-century studded and traceried door. The nave’s windows are of three lights in a Perpendicular style. The north wall is buttressed and incorporates 13th-century masonry and a pointed doorway with imposts, one with foliate moulding, and three square-headed, two-light windows. The chancel has three-light Perpendicular windows on the south side, two-light windows with renewed tracery to the north, and a rebuilt east window of three lights. Within the north wall, a 13th-century standing figure and a 14th-century seated figure have been reset in the masonry. The north and south aisles and the north chapel have embattled parapets, while the nave’s south side and the chancel’s parapet are plain.

Inside, the ground stage of the tower contains surviving springers for an uncompleted vault. A narrow, pointed tower arch leads into the nave, and the nave and chancel arcade comprises double-chamfered pointed arches on octagonal piers with plain capitals. A pointed chancel arch is set on half-octagonal responds. Two 12th-century scalloped capitals are set into the south aisle wall. The church contains a well-preserved painted organ case and gallery of 1893 by Temple Moore. A 13th-century circular font sits on a cylindrical pedestal, retaining traces of cable moulding. Monuments include a tablet dated 1580 to James Westrop in the north aisle, a brass to Elizabeth Cayley who died in 1688, a wall monument to members of the Sawdon family who died between 1782 and 1820 by C Fisher of York, a tablet to Ann Harland, who died in 1844, by Matthew Noble, and an elaborate wall monument in high relief with a broken pedimented surround and Latin inscription to Sir William Cayley, who died in 1681, including a bust to Elizabeth Sarah Cayley, who died in 1805, by Chambers of Scarborough. A window in the chancel’s south wall, dating to 1885, is a carefully reproduced version of Raphael's “Sermon of St Paul at Athens” from the Sistine Cartoons. William Wordsworth was married in the church to Mary Hutchinson on 4 October 1802.