All Saints' Church is an

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

church in

Leek, Staffordshire Leek is a market town and civil parish in Staffordshire, England, on the River Churnet north east of Stoke-on-Trent. It is an ancient borough and was granted its royal charter in 1214. It is the administrative centre for the Staffordshire ...

, England. It is a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

. 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. 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, 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 A clerestory ( ; , also clearstory, clearstorey, or overstorey; from Old French ''cler estor'') is a high section of wall that contains windows above eye-level. Its purpose is to admit light, fresh air, or both. Historically, a ''clerestory' ...

. 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 (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

. 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 an English painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter. Burne-Jones worked with William Morris as a founding part ...

. The south wall window of the

Lady Chapel A Lady chapel or lady chapel is a traditional British English, British term for a chapel dedicated to Mary, mother of Jesus, particularly those inside a cathedral or other large church (building), church. The chapels are also known as a Mary chape ...

, 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 wh ...

.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, Brisbane, Queensland *All ...

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

History

Details

Interior

See also

References