All Saints' Church, Bryher is a parish church

Parish church

A parish church , in Christianity, is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish, the basic administrative unit of episcopal churches....

 in the Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

 located in Bryher, Isles of Scilly

Bryher, Isles of Scilly

Bryher is the smallest of the five inhabited islands of the Isles of Scilly. It is home to a population of 83 . Bryher has an area of .-Geography:...

.

History

All Saints

All Saints

All Saints' Day , often shortened to All Saints, is a solemnity celebrated on 1 November by parts of Western Christianity, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Christianity, in honour of all the saints, known and unknown...

' Anglican church claims to be the most westerly church in the Anglican provinces

Ecclesiastical Province

An ecclesiastical province is a large jurisdiction of religious government, so named by analogy with a secular province, existing in certain hierarchical Christian churches, especially in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches and in the Anglican Communion...

 of Canterbury

Province of Canterbury

The Province of Canterbury, also called the Southern Province, is one of two ecclesiastical provinces making up the Church of England...

 and York

Province of York

The Province of York is one of two ecclesiastical provinces making up the Church of England, and consists of 14 dioceses which cover the northern third of England and the Isle of Man. York was elevated to an Archbishopric in 735 AD: Ecgbert of York was the first archbishop...

.

The earliest record of a permanent church on Bryher is the account of the dedication of a small building to 'God and All Saints' by the Chaplain

Chaplain

Traditionally, a chaplain is a minister in a specialized setting such as a priest, pastor, rabbi, or imam or lay representative of a religion attached to a secular institution such as a hospital, prison, military unit, police department, university, or private chapel...

 of St Mary's

St. Mary's, Isles of Scilly

St Mary's is the largest island of the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago off the southwest coast of Cornwall in the United Kingdom.-Description:...

, Revd Paul Hathaway, in 1742. It was approximately 24 feet by 13 feet and also served the community on Samson

Samson, Isles of Scilly

Samson is the largest uninhabited island of the Isles of Scilly. It is in size. The island consists of two hills, North Hill and South Hill, which are connected by an isthmus on which the former inhabitants built many of their sturdy stone cottages...

.

The church was enlarged in 1822 by the surveyor Christopher Strick to provide seating for 154 people. There were repairs in 1832 and 1833 by Thomas Downing, carpenter and William Williams.

There is a plain granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 font

Baptismal font

A baptismal font is an article of church furniture or a fixture used for the baptism of children and adults.-Aspersion and affusion fonts:...

 dated 1861. There were additions and alterations in 1882 and a new chancel

Chancel

In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar in the sanctuary at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building...

 was added in 1897 and new roof (6 feet higher than the previous) in 1930. The stained glass

Stained glass

The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...

 windows were replaced, the work being completed in 2007.

Parish structure

All Saints' Church is within the United Benefice of the Isles of Scilly

Isles of Scilly

The Isles of Scilly form an archipelago off the southwestern tip of the Cornish peninsula of Great Britain. The islands have had a unitary authority council since 1890, and are separate from the Cornwall unitary authority, but some services are combined with Cornwall and the islands are still part...

 parishes, comprising

• St Agnes' Church, St Agnes
• St Martin's Church, St Martin's
• St Mary's Church, St Mary's
• St Mary's Old Church, St Mary's
• St Nicholas's Church, Tresco