All Saints, Stamford

     Across Red Lion Square from St John's church stands All Saints.  It's appearance, like St John's is of Perpendicular gothic; the nave appears low and spreading, even a little workmanlike as sometimes Perp can be, next to the spectacular, assertive, tower and spire.  There is a element of fantasy too about both porches: the S spiky with buttresses and a huge ogee hoodmould, the N like a miniature castle from an illuminated manuscript has suddenly sprung into 3D. Charming.  Uniquely the base of the E, S & W walls is arcaded - EE along the E &S, Perp on the W.  The culminative effect is of something a little beyond the ordinary.
     Inside is spacious but oddly cave like as though it is partly hollowed out of the sloping ground, but perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised as All Saints was restored by Edward Browning in 1857, though the reredos and the septum (exotically made of Mexican onyx) are by T Treadway Hansom and date from the 1870s, and as at Uffington and Clipsham Browning was good at producing richly decorated cave like spaces.  Church as schatzkammer.  All Saints in comparison to those two smaller churches is not so successful.  It lacks the numinous. Perhaps the budget was not large enough or the scale of the building too big for his talents to come fully into play. For whatever reason in all a bit worldly, and I think it would be fair to say that the interior of All Saints has been ill-served by conventional Anglican taste. Sometimes Protestant use sits ill in a medieval catholic shell. Still there are things to look out for: the fine EE arcade in the nave and the capitals in the chancel; the Late Gothic ceiling of the south chapel; the  brasses to the Browne family, very rich from the wool trade, who paid for the Perp rebuilding of the church as well as founding Browne's Hospital in Broad St, and, I think, Stamford School.