All Saints Church, Runcorn is the parish church of Runcorn

Runcorn

Runcorn is an industrial town and cargo port within the borough of Halton in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. In 2009, its population was estimated to be 61,500. The town is on the southern bank of the River Mersey where the estuary narrows to form Runcorn Gap. Directly to the north...

, Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

, England. It is sited on the south bank of the River Mersey

River Mersey

The River Mersey is a river in North West England. It is around long, stretching from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and ending at Liverpool Bay, Merseyside. For centuries, it formed part of the ancient county divide between Lancashire and Cheshire....

 overlooking Runcorn Gap. The church has been designated by English Heritage

English Heritage

English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...

 as a Grade II* listed building. It is an active Anglican

Anglicanism

Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...

 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 diocese of Chester

Diocese of Chester

The Diocese of Chester is a Church of England diocese in the Province of York based in Chester, covering the county of Cheshire in its pre-1974 boundaries...

, the archdeaconry of Chester and the deanery of Frodsham. Its benefice is combined with that of Holy Trinity, Runcorn

Holy Trinity Church, Runcorn

Holy Trinity Church is located in Runcorn, Cheshire, England. It is an active Anglican parish church in the diocese of Chester, the archdeaconry of Chester and the deanery of Frodsham. Its benefice is combined with that of All Saints, Runcorn...

.

History

A church has stood on the site of the present church for centuries. There is a tradition that the first church was founded in 915 by Ethelfleda

Ethelfleda

Æthelflæd , was the eldest daughter of King Alfred the Great of Wessex and Ealhswith, wife of Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia, and after his death, ruler of Mercia...

 when she built a castle nearby. This church was dedicated to St Bertelin

St Bertelin

Beorhthelm is an Anglo-Saxon saint about whom the only evidence is legendary. He is said to have had a hermitage on the island of Bethnei, which later became the town of Stafford. Later he went to a more hilly area, possibly near Ilam, where he died. His shrine is in the Church of the Holy...

 and was probably a simple structure of wood and thatch. There is no mention of Runcorn in the Domesday Book

Domesday Book

Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...

 but there is evidence that Nigel, the first baron of Halton

Barony of Halton

The Barony of Halton, in Cheshire, England, comprised a succession of 15 barons who held under the overlordship of the County Palatine of Chester ruled by the Earl of Chester. It was not therefore an English feudal barony which was under full royal jurisdiction, which is the usual sense of the...

 who died in 1080, conferred the church with a priest "in the days of the Conqueror

William I of England

William I , also known as William the Conqueror , was the first Norman King of England from Christmas 1066 until his death. He was also Duke of Normandy from 3 July 1035 until his death, under the name William II...

". A medieval church was later built on the site. When this was demolished in the 19th century, Norman

Norman architecture

About|Romanesque architecture, primarily English|other buildings in Normandy|Architecture of Normandy.File:Durham Cathedral. Nave by James Valentine c.1890.jpg|thumb|200px|The nave of Durham Cathedral demonstrates the characteristic round arched style, though use of shallow pointed arches above the...

 capitals

Capital (architecture)

In architecture the capital forms the topmost member of a column . It mediates between the column and the load thrusting down upon it, broadening the area of the column's supporting surface...

 were found in the masonry of its tower. Judging by the its Early English style of architecture, the medieval church would have been built around 1250. It was built in local sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

. The 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 rebuilt in the 14th century with tracery of the Decorated period in the east window. Also in the 14th century a tower was built at the west end of the church and this was either rebuilt or increased in size in the 15th century. A major item of the church furniture was a magnificent pre-Reformation

English Reformation

The English Reformation was the series of events in 16th-century England by which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church....

 rood screen

Rood screen

The rood screen is a common feature in late medieval church architecture. It is typically an ornate partition between the chancel and nave, of more or less open tracery constructed of wood, stone, or wrought iron...

. This was destroyed when the church was rebuilt in the 19th century, although a few fragments of it were used in building the present choirstalls. The nave of the church measured 52 feet (16 m) by 40 feet (12 m) and the embattled

Battlement

A battlement in defensive architecture, such as that of city walls or castles, comprises a parapet , in which portions have been cut out at intervals to allow the discharge of arrows or other missiles. These cut-out portions form crenels...

 tower was 57 feet (17 m) high. At some time the dedication of the church was changed to St Bartholomew and later to All Saints.

In the 18th century the south aisle was in a serious state of decay and in 1740 this was rebuilt in brick. In 1801 the church was too small for the congregation so it was extended by enlarging the south aisle and adding galleries to this aisle and to the west end. The former Gothic

Gothic architecture

Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....

 windows were replaced by round-headed windows. During the first half of the 19th century there was increasing concern about the fabric of the church. The tower was becoming dangerous and orders were given that the bells should not be rung. In 1817 it was recommended that the height of the tower should be reduced. The south wall of the chancel was leaning and only kept in position by its roof. The south aisle, built only 15 years previously, was sinking and gaps were appearing round the windows. It was concluded that the church should be demolished and replaced. Some temporary repairs were carried out but there was insufficient money available to rebuild the church at that time. By the 1840s enough money had been raised and in September 1846 the last sermon was preached from the medieval church. The foundation stone

Cornerstone

The cornerstone concept is derived from the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation, important since all other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure.Over time a cornerstone became a ceremonial masonry stone, or...

 for the new church was laid at Easter 1847 by Sir Richard Brooke of Norton Priory

Norton Priory

Norton Priory is a historic site in Norton, Runcorn, Cheshire, England, comprising the remains of an abbey complex dating from the 12th to 16th centuries, and an 18th-century country house; it is now a museum. The remains are a scheduled ancient monument and have been designated by English...

. On 11 January 1849 the new church was dedicated by Dr John Graham

John Graham (bishop)

John Graham was an English churchman and academic. He was master of Christ's College, Cambridge from 1830 to 1848 and Bishop of Chester from 1848 to 1865.-Life:...

, Bishop of Chester

Bishop of Chester

The Bishop of Chester is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Chester in the Province of York.The diocese expands across most of the historic county boundaries of Cheshire, including the Wirral Peninsula and has its see in the City of Chester where the seat is located at the Cathedral...

. The architect was Anthony Salvin

Anthony Salvin

Anthony Salvin was an English architect. He gained a reputation as an expert on medieval buildings and applied this expertise to his new buildings and his restorations...

. The stained glass in the chancel windows was given by Sir Richard Brooke. A clock was installed in the tower in 1851. Three new lancet window

Lancet window

A lancet window is a tall narrow window with a pointed arch at its top. It acquired the "lancet" name from its resemblance to a lance. Instances of this architectural motif are most often found in Gothic and ecclesiastical structures, where they are often placed singly or in pairs.The motif first...

s were added to the chancel in 1900.

Exterior

The church is built of Runcorn sandstone with a slate

Slate

Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...

 roof in Early English style. Its plan consists of a nave

Nave

In Romanesque and Gothic Christian abbey, cathedral basilica and church architecture, the nave is the central approach to the high altar, the main body of the church. "Nave" was probably suggested by the keel shape of its vaulting...

 of five bays

Bay (architecture)

A bay is a unit of form in architecture. This unit is defined as the zone between the outer edges of an engaged column, pilaster, or post; or within a window frame, doorframe, or vertical 'bas relief' wall form.-Defining elements:...

 with north and south aisle

Aisle

An aisle is, in general, a space for walking with rows of seats on both sides or with rows of seats on one side and a wall on the other...

s and a clerestory

Clerestory

Clerestory is an architectural term that historically denoted an upper level of a Roman basilica or of the nave of a Romanesque or Gothic church, the walls of which rise above the rooflines of the lower aisles and are pierced with windows. In modern usage, clerestory refers to any high windows...

, a chancel which is lower and narrower than the nave, and a tower at the southwest corner of the nave. The tower is square with an octagonal spire. It has corner buttress

Buttress

A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall...

es, large louvred

Louver

A louver or louvre , from the French l'ouvert; "the open one") is a window, blind or shutter with horizontal slats that are angled to admit light and air, but to keep out rain, direct sunshine, and noise...

 lancets at the bell-stage, and two tiers of lucarne

Lucarne

A lucarne is a small dormer window that is built on a spire or roof during the Gothic and Romanesque time period....

s springing from the base of the tower and from the broach

Broach spire

A broach spire is a type of spire, a tall pyramidal or conical structure usually on the top of a tower or a turret. A broach spire starts on a square base and is carried up to a tapering octagonal spire by means of triangular faces....

. At the corners of the nave and the chancel are buttress

Buttress

A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall...

es that rise up as spirelets. On the gable

Gable

A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...

s of the chancel and the nave are cross-finial

Finial

The finial is an architectural device, typically carved in stone and employed decoratively to emphasize the apex of a gable or any of various distinctive ornaments at the top, end, or corner of a building or structure. Smaller finials can be used as a decorative ornament on the ends of curtain rods...

s and pinnacle

Pinnacle

A pinnacle is an architectural ornament originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire...

s. At the east end of the north aisle is the organ chamber and at the east end of the south aisle is a war memorial chapel. The windows along the clerestory are round with inset quatrefoil

Quatrefoil

The word quatrefoil etymologically means "four leaves", and applies to general four-lobed shapes in various contexts.-In heraldry:In heraldic terminology, a quatrefoil is a representation of a flower with four petals, or a leaf with four leaflets . It is sometimes shown "slipped", i.e. with an...

s. All the other windows are lancets.

Interior

The chancel is paved with Minton encaustic tile

Encaustic tile

Encaustic tiles are ceramic tiles in which the pattern or figure on the surface is not a product of the glaze but of different colors of clay. They are usually of two colors but a tile may be composed of as many as six. The pattern is inlaid into the body of the tile, so that the design remains as...

s. The marble

Marble

Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...

 reredos

Reredos

thumb|300px|right|An altar and reredos from [[St. Josaphat's Roman Catholic Church|St. Josaphat Catholic Church]] in [[Detroit]], [[Michigan]]. This would be called a [[retable]] in many other languages and countries....

 was given in 1888 and the alabaster

Alabaster

Alabaster is a name applied to varieties of two distinct minerals, when used as a material: gypsum and calcite . The former is the alabaster of the present day; generally, the latter is the alabaster of the ancients...

 altar rails in 1900. Mural tablets, some of which were moved from the old church, commemorate members of the Brooke family and previous vicars of the parish. Also moved from the old church are a holy table from the late 17th century, a 18th-century wooden chest, the royal coat of arms of George III

George III of the United Kingdom

George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...

 and a benefaction board from around 1700. The oldest dated memorial is to two women who died in 1672 who are described as "both good wives". The next in age is a large tablet to the memory of Thomas Brooke, who died in 1737. Two memorials are by John Bacon

John Bacon

John Bacon was a British sculptor.Born in Southwark, he was the son of a cloth worker from Somerset. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a manufacturer of porcelain at Lambeth, where he was at first employed in painting the small ornamental pieces of china, but was promoted to modeller...

. One is to Sir Richard Brooke, who died in 1792, which shows a putto

Putto

A putto is a figure of an infant often depicted as a young male. Putti are defined as chubby, winged or wingless, male child figure in nude. Putti are distinct from cherubim, but some English-speakers confuse them with each other, except that in the plural, "the Cherubim" refers to the biblical...

 unveiling an urn

Urn

An urn is a vase, ordinarily covered, that usually has a narrowed neck above a footed pedestal. "Knife urns" placed on pedestals flanking a dining-room sideboard were an English innovation for high-style dining rooms of the late 1760s...

, and the other is to another Sir Richard Brooke who died in 1796, and shows a female figure by an urn. The memorial to Thomas Brooke, who died in 1820, is by B. F. Hardenburg of London. A memorial to another Sir Richard Brooke, who died in 1865, is a brass

Monumental brass

Monumental brass is a species of engraved sepulchral memorial which in the early part of the 13th century began to partially take the place of three-dimensional monuments and effigies carved in stone or wood...

 in the form of a cross. In the nave are a number of Georgian

Georgian architecture

Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1720 and 1840. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of the United...

 tablets including one to John Bankes, who died in 1817, by T. Grindrod. The Rev John Barclay, a former vicar of Runcorn who died in 1866, has an "ornately Gothic" memorial by Williams and Clay of Warrington

Warrington

Warrington is a town, borough and unitary authority area of Cheshire, England. It stands on the banks of the River Mersey, which is tidal to the west of the weir at Howley. It lies 16 miles east of Liverpool, 19 miles west of Manchester and 8 miles south of St Helens...

 with his portrait in relief

Relief

Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...

. The stained glass in the chancel includes two windows with depictions of the Annunciation

Annunciation

The Annunciation, also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary or Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Virgin Mary, that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her...

 and the Resurrection

Resurrection of Jesus

The Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus states that Jesus returned to bodily life on the third day following his death by crucifixion. It is a key element of Christian faith and theology and part of the Nicene Creed: "On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures"...

. In the south aisle is a memorial to J. R. Hughes, who died at sea in 1874; "he is shown in the water wearing nothing but mutton-chop whiskers and a crown proferred by an angel". The ring

Ring of bells

"Ring of bells" is a term most often applied to a set of bells hung in the English style, typically for change ringing...

 consists of eight bells which were cast in 1851 by Charles and George Mears of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry

Whitechapel Bell Foundry

The Whitechapel Bell Foundry is a bell foundry in Whitechapel in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London. The foundry is listed by the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest manufacturing company in Great Britain...

.

External features

At the southeast corner of the churchyard is a former hearse house, which is now an electricity sub-station, dating from about 1833. It is a rectangular single-story building of red sandstone with a quarry tile roof. The door opening at the front has a wide semicircular arch with a keystone

Keystone (architecture)

A keystone is the wedge-shaped stone piece at the apex of a masonry vault or arch, which is the final piece placed during construction and locks all the stones into position, allowing the arch to bear weight. This makes a keystone very important structurally...

 and springing blocks. Above this is a string course and a cornice

Cornice

Cornice molding is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns any building or furniture element: the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the edge of a pedestal. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown molding.The function of the projecting...

 with moulded eaves

Eaves

The eaves of a roof are its lower edges. They usually project beyond the walls of the building to carry rain water away.-Etymology:"Eaves" is derived from Old English and is both the singular and plural form of the word.- Function :...

. On the west side and at the rear are small vents with semicircular heads and keystones. It is listed Grade II.