Church Heritage Record 641268

Six-bay nave with chancel, aisles, NE Lady Chapel, SE organ loft and attached vestry; attached to NW corner by an open porch is four-bay church hall with w/c annexe to N end.

Linked church hall also by W. H. Romaine Walker, 1909, separately listed at Grade II for high group value with church. One composition around two sides of a courtyard. Shares common entrance with church. Contains kitchen, lavatories and community space.

Within the parish are the ‘Buckland Rings’, a multivallate hill-fort with evidence for Neolithic and Bronze age occupation, and Bronze Age remains and beaker pottery have been found at a number of other sites. Other archaeological finds in the vicinity of the church have included Lower Paleolithic hand-axes, and Roman remains including a ditch, coins, a cult head and (possibly) carved stones and a necklace. However, there is no special reason to think that the area of the church and churchyard has significant archaeological potential.

An archaeological watching brief should be in place in the event of any excavation of the site.

The churchyard is unburied.

Consecrated in December 1909 and opened in the following year.

Paid for with money bequeathed by two sisters, Miss Harriet Spike and Mrs Fanny Haldane (widow of George Haldane). Provided 300 seats serving the westward expansion of Lymington, with a hall intended for use as a Sunday school. The builders were J. McWilliam of Bournemouth.

William Henry Romaine Walker (1854-1940) studied under G. E. Street (noted Victorian ecclesiastical architect and designer of the Law Courts). His father was a vicar and Romaine Walker’s first church work was for his father’s church of St Saviour, Pimlico, where he oversaw internal alterations in 1882-83. Best known for his country houses: nearest to All Saints is the noted Rhinefield Lodge of 1888-90. Also rebuilt the main staircase at Chatsworth in 1910 and designed the Edwardian extensions to the Tate. His most comparable buildings to All Saints are the churches of St John the Baptist, Upper Parkstone, Dorset (1902-03) and St Saviour, Brockenhurst (consecrated 1905), both with Besant.

All the trees in and around the churchyard have TPOs.

Church and hall are set at right angles, defining two sides of a courtyard. The two buildings are linked by a shared entrance porch with a pointed-arched portal.

The church hall is in a C17 domestic style, chosen as a subtle contrast with that of the church to express their different functions. It has four windows each side, E and W, with mullions and leaded glazing.  There is a lower projection to the N containing the kitchen, with two windows and a door on the W side, and a stone chimney to each end N and S; the boiler house and lavatories are at the S end, with a door on the W side.  The carefully considered integration of the church hall with the church is noted amongst the principal reasons for the building’s designation at Grade II.

The porch features much fine stone carving. The column capitals to the main portal are carved with thick foliage through which a hooded figure alternately pursues and is pursued by a monstrous creature. Internally, the doorway to the church features headstops of a knight and lady, and that to the hall of a maiden and an old man. The ceiling tracery springs from corbels depicting the symbols of the four Evangelists and meets in a Green Man boss.

The church window tracery is in Decorated Gothic style, with mouchettes within mandorlas to upper lights. Aisle and transept windows are two-light, with hood moulds and a string course beneath. There is a set-back buttress between each pair of windows. Triple E windows are joined by a hood-mould: a two-light central window with a lancet either side. Double W windows, both two-light, are joined by a hood mould, with a string-course beneath. A plinth runs around the church.

The aisles are lower than the nave. The roof line is defined by a deep cornice. There is a small octagonal belfry tower at the E end of the N aisle with a crocketted spirelet with a cross finial and lancet openings, set in a crenelated turret with lancet openings beneath the parapet and a single lancet, containing tracery similar to that of the other church windows, on the SE face.

On the N side, a low vestry and an organ chamber in the form of a N transept with diagonal buttresses and a door on the W side.

At the W end, a door with hood mould. Triple lancets in apex of gable to ventilate the roof-space. Gable ends with kneelers to E and W ends, each surmounted with cross finial.

The N door (wooden, single-leaf, with ornamental iron hinges) opens into a light, lofty interior. There is a level parquet floor until the E end, where there is one step up to the chancel and the Lady Chapel. The chancel floor is in wide bands of white stone alternating with thin bands of red tile, creating a sort of pinstriped streaky bacon effect. There is a further step at the communion rail and two steps up to the altar.

Clustered quatrefoil piers with roll-moulded capitals carry moulded arches. A stained timber wagon roof, divided into square compartments with moulded ribs, is continuous the length of the church. There is no chancel arch. A string-course runs under the windows, which have hood moulds.

The building’s exuberant stone carving, inside and out, is noted in the listing description as being ‘of a very high order’, and one of the principal reasons for the building’s designation at Grade II. Moulded surrounds to NW and W doors are enriched with characterful carvings of tradesmen, apparently portraits: a carpenter with a saw, a smith with a vice, a mason with hammer and chisel, and a stone-carver working on a gargoyle. There are further carvings between the E windows and forming stops to the hood moulds of the arches between the chancel and organ chamber / Lady Chapel. A small corridor between the Lady Chapel and the chancel formed by the little belfry tower has a carefully detailed ribbed vault with a central roof boss depicting a piper. There is a piscina in the sanctuary, S side, with elaborate floral tracery.

The listing description notes as a principal reason for the building’s designation at Grade II that the church is carefully designed and very little altered, possessing a spacious and harmonious interior. The replacement of the original oak pews with modern, brightly upholstered chairs has somewhat upset this harmony but the quality of the whole is undiminished. There is an oak choir screen between the chancel and the Lady Chapel. The choir stalls stand on level parquet platforms.