The Church of All Saints is the main

Church of England parish church A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ...

Westbury, Wiltshire Westbury is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in west Wiltshire, England. The town lies below the northwestern edge of Salisbury Plain, about south of Trowbridge and a similar distance north of Warminster. Westbury w ...

, England. There has been a church on the site since Saxon times, and the current church, largely rebuilt around 1437, is a

Grade I listed 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 ...

building.

History and architecture

A church on this site has existed since at least 1086 and was recorded in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

. It is most likely to have been a

Saxon The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony () which became a Carolingian " stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like th ...

wooden church on the same site as the present church. The first stone church on the site was built circa 1220 by the

Normans The Normans (Norman language, Norman: ''Normaunds''; ; ) were a population arising in the medieval Duchy of Normandy from the intermingling between Norsemen, Norse Viking settlers and locals of West Francia. The Norse settlements in West Franc ...

, and this was replaced by a 14th-century Gothic church using the same plan as the Norman church. This Gothic church was built between approximately 1340 and 1380 in the transitional style between the Decorated and

Perpendicular Gothic Perpendicular Gothic (also Perpendicular, Rectilinear, or Third Pointed) architecture was the third and final style of English Gothic architecture developed in the Kingdom of England during the Late Middle Ages, typified by large windows, four-ce ...

styles. Parts of this building can be seen in the present church, notably in the lower parts of the

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform ("cross-shaped") cruciform plan, churches, in particular within the Romanesque architecture, Romanesque a ...

s and

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 ...

and the lower portion of the tower. This building was extensively rebuilt and extended from circa 1437, which included adding a

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' ...

to the nave, adding three chapels and raising the central tower to its present height of 84 feet (26 metres). The north chapel was built and endowed by William de Westbury (d. 1448/49; a judge of the King's Bench) and his father. In the middle of the 16th century, the south

porch A porch (; , ) is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance to a building. A porch is placed in front of the façade of a building it commands, and forms a low front. Alternatively, it may be a vestibule (architecture), vestibule (a s ...

was built with a small room above it and 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 ...

was extended eastwards to its present length. By 1847, major restoration was required and was led by the Rev. Stafford Brown. Architect T. H. Wyatt was engaged, the nave roof was renewed, a new large west window and a small vestry created, the east wall of the chancel buttressed and the gallery removed. In 1968, it was found the stability of the entire building was at risk because an old

culvert A culvert is a structure that channels water past an obstacle or to a subterranean waterway. Typically embedded so as to be surrounded by soil, a culvert may be made from a pipe (fluid conveyance), pipe, reinforced concrete or other materia ...

had broken, and water had saturated the clay into which the foundations of the church were built. Cracks in the stonework were appearing and the tower was leaning. 150 concrete piles were driven into the ground to a depth of up to 40 feet, and connected with new cross beams to stabilise the building. Pevsner likened the architectural style to nearby Edington Priory, although "much renewed". He described the west front as "remarkable, with battlements rising up the steep lean-to roofs of the aisles and the less steep nave roof".

Bells

The central tower, with its unusual rectangular shape, contains the third heaviest peal of eight bells hung for

change ringing Change ringing is the art of ringing a set of tuning (music), tuned bell (instrument), bells in a tightly controlled manner to produce precise variations in their successive striking sequences, known as "changes". This can be by method ringing in ...

in the world, after Sherborne Abbey, Dorset and

St Peter's Cathedral, Adelaide St Peter's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Adelaide and Metropolitan of the Province of South Australia. The cathedral, a significant Adelaide landmark, is sit ...

, Australia. They are popular with visiting bell-ringers. Prior to 1921, the tower contained a ring of six bells cast by six different founders between 1671 and 1738. John Taylor & Co of Loughborough, Leicestershire, were chosen to overhaul the bells in 1921 and it was proposed to augment them to eight by casting two new trebles, recasting two of the original six and retuning the other four. It was found when they had been removed to the foundry that none of the original bells could be satisfactorily retuned, so the foundry, with permission from the church authorities, recast all six bells and made two more, producing the octave the tower contains today. The tenor weighs 35 long hundredweight and strikes the note C#. There are also a sanctus bell of c.1299, and an unused bell from around 1600 that hangs in an old wooden frame above the peal of eight.

Monuments

Inside the church is a bust by Sir Robert Taylor of William Phipps (c.1681–1748; born at Heywood, became

Governor of Bombay Until the 18th century, Bombay consisted of seven islands separated by shallow sea. These seven islands were part of a larger archipelago in the Arabian sea, off the western coast of India. The date of city's founding is unclear—historians tr ...

). The churchyard has several table tombs from the 18th century and the first half of the 19th. South-east of the chancel stands the parish war memorial of 1919 or 1920, a tall stone cross on a three-stage carved base and a plain plinth.

Parish

The ancient parish of Westbury extended east to Bratton and west to Dilton, and both areas had churches that were dependent on Westbury. A separate district was assigned to St James' church at Bratton in 1845. Numbers attending the 14th-century St Mary's church at Dilton (now called Old Dilton) dwindled in the 18th century, and more so after Holy Trinity church was built at Dilton Marsh in 1844, also gaining its own district in 1845. St Mary's went out of regular use in 1900 and was vested in the

Churches Conservation Trust The Churches Conservation Trust is a registered charity whose purpose is to protect historic churches at risk in England. The charity cares for over 350 churches of architectural, cultural and historic significance, which have been transferred in ...

in 1974, although it remains consecrated. In the north, after Holy Trinity at Heywood was built in 1849 a district was assigned to it, further reducing the area of Westbury parish. To the south-west at Westbury Leigh, the Church of the Holy Saviour was built as a

chapel of ease A chapel of ease (or chapel-of-ease) is a church architecture, church building other than the parish church, built within the bounds of a parish for the attendance of those who cannot reach the parish church conveniently, generally due to trav ...

in 1877, then enlarged in 1889–90. Today, All Saints' is at the centre of the White Horse benefice which covers the old and new Dilton churches, Holy Saviour, and the small 1905 church at Brokerswood.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Westbury, All Saints Grade I listed churches in Wiltshire 14th-century church buildings in England Church of England church buildings in Wiltshire All Saints