All Saints' Church is an

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...

church in

Leek, Staffordshire Leek is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the county of Staffordshire, England, on the River Churnet. It is situated about north east of Stoke-on-Trent. It is an ancient borough and was granted its royal charter in 1 ...

, England. It is a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. It was designed by

Norman Shaw Richard Norman Shaw RA (7 May 1831 – 17 November 1912), also known as Norman Shaw, was a British architect who worked from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings. He is considered to be among the g ...

, and built in 1885–1887; the church has stained glass by Morris & Co.

History

An earlier brick-built church in the Compton area of Leek opened in 1863; it was known as Compton Schoolchurch or Christ Church. It was enlarged in 1885.A P Baggs, M F Cleverdon, D A Johnston and N J Tringham, "Leek: Leek and Lowe", in ''A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 7, Leek and the Moorlands'', ed. C R J Currie and M W Greenslade (London, 1996), pp. 84–169.
British History Online, accessed 14 September 2017. Joseph Challinor, a Leek solicitor, gave part of the site for a new church in Compton, and contributed nearly one third of the cost. The church was designed by

; he had come to the area in the 1860s to design the new St Matthew's Church in

Meerbrook file:St Matthew's Church, Meerbrook.JPG, St Matthew's Church, Meerbrook Meerbrook () is a small village in North Staffordshire, on the River Churnet at the edge of the Peak District National Park. It is situated four miles north of the town of Lee ...

. The foundation stone of All Saints' was laid in 1885, and the church was consecrated in 1887. The parish of All Saints was formed in 1889, out of St Luke's and St Edward's. It covered the southern part of the town and

Longsdon Longsdon is a village and civil parish in the Staffordshire Moorlands district of Staffordshire, England, about southwest of Leek, on the A53 road. Civil parish The civil parish was created in 1894. (Formerly Longsdon was part of a civil par ...

, a village south-west of Leek. The parishes of St Edward, All Saints and St Luke became the parish of Leek in 1979.

Details

View from the south The church has a large

crossing tower A crossing, in ecclesiastical architecture, is the junction of the four arms of a cruciform (cross-shaped) church. In a typically oriented church (especially of Romanesque and Gothic styles), the crossing gives access to the nave on the west, ...

with clasping buttresses. There is a wide

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

, of four bays, and a single bay in the crossing. There is a low

clerestory In architecture, a clerestory ( ; , also clearstory, clearstorey, or overstorey) is a high section of wall that contains windows above eye level. Its purpose is to admit light, fresh air, or both. Historically, ''clerestory'' denoted an upper l ...

. The church being on a sloping site, the vestry is beneath the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...

. There is a deep porch in the north-west, with a wide entrance.

Interior

Much of the stained glass is by Morris & Co., of which some are to designs of

Edward Burne-Jones Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, (; 28 August, 183317 June, 1898) was a British painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais, Ford Madox Brown and Holman Hun ...

. The south wall window of the

Lady Chapel A Lady chapel or lady chapel is a traditional British term for a chapel dedicated to "Our Lady", Mary, mother of Jesus, particularly those inside a cathedral or other large church. The chapels are also known as a Mary chapel or a Marian chapel, an ...

, and all the painted decorations in the chancel, are by

Gerald Horsley Gerald Callcott Horsley (31 October 1862, in Glasgow – 2 July 1917, in Crowborough, East Sussex)*Gerhard Bissell, ''Horsley, Gerald'', in: ''Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon'', vol. 75, 2012 (in German) was a British architect and draughtsman who l ...

.All Saints, Compton, Leek by Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1912): Interior
The Victorian Web, accessed 14 September 2017

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leek, All Saints' Church

All Saints' Church All Saints Church, or All Saints' Church or variations on the name may refer to: Albania *All Saints' Church, Himarë Australia *All Saints Church, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory * All Saints Anglican Church, Henley Brook, Western Austr ...

Church of England church buildings in Staffordshire Grade I listed churches in Staffordshire Diocese of Lichfield

History

Details

Interior

See also

References