Description

HASLEMERE

915/10/42 GRAYSWOOD ROAD
19-SEP-77 GRAYSWOOD
(West side)
CHURCH OF ALL SAINTS

GV II
Church. 1901-2 by the Swedish architect, Axel Haig. C13 style with Arts and Crafts elements. Squared rock-faced Bargate stone rubble with freestone dressings; tiled roof with sprocketted eaves; timber-framed belfry stage and shingled spire to tower. Nave, chancel; SE tower with organ chamber in the base; adjoining SE vestry with its own porch; NE transept with boiler room on its E face with stack.

EXTERIOR. Lancet windows and buttresses to the nave. 2-light plate-traceried N window to transept, similar chamfered W window; 3-light Geometric Decorated style E window. 2-stage tower, the belfry stage timber-framed with louvered openings and a broach spire with hooded ventilators. The SE porch is gabled to the E with a carved demi-figure in the gable. NE boiler-room has a catslide roof with hipped N end and square-headed openings. A stack in the corner is gabled to the N and has a round chimney shaft. SW porch with a steep gable with incised cross, outer doorway with arch carried on paired shafts and original 2-leaf inner door under a segmental arch.

INTERIOR. Roll-moulded stone chancel arch on chamfered responds decorated with carved heads and stops. The nave has a boarded wagon roof divided into panels by moulded arch braces on moulded stone corbels; similar roofs to N transept and chancel. The truss W of the N transept is doubled and supported on wide carved stone corbels which form the base for statue niches with painted timber statues. 2-bay stone arcade into the N transept with a round pier on a very tall stone base, the capital carved with the symbols of the Evangelists, the responds with richly-carved capitals. In the spandrel above the pier a large pierced roundel with a large sculpted stone angel. The chancel has a marble reredos with sculpted demi-figures in square niches and a painted frieze of demi-figures on either side across the E wall. Below the frieze a probably original embroidery illustrates the Annunciation. Above the frieze painted figures of Moses and David on linen canvas, possibly by Carl Almquist. Art Nouveau gilded grilles to radiators and pipework in the chancel. Chancel floor of herringbone tiles; woodblock floors elsewhere. Well-made woodwork includes low wooden chancel rail combining Early English and classical motifs; organ case; choir stalls with ends with poppyhead finials and nave benches with shouldered ends and sunk panels. Polygonal timber pulpit with blind traceried sides on a stone stem; octagonal font with unusual deep bowl with alternating flat and convex sides on a carved base on shafts. Painted wooden sculpture of the Adoration of the Magi on the chancel wall. Stained glass includes E and N windows by Carl Almquist and a good W window by Kempe.

HISTORY. The church was funded by Alfred Hugh Harman of Grayswood Place who paid for the church and endowed it (wall plaque). Group value with churchyard wall, lychgate and monument to Axel Haig. Haig was a pupil of Burges and a noted engraver.

A largely single-phase building, externally compact with well-crafted fittings and some unusual details inside.

Sources
Pevsner, Surrey, 1971, 262
All Saints, Grayswood Centenary Celebration 1902-2002, leaflet, 2002.

Listing NGR: SU9170734774

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• All Saints' Church, Grayswood at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q26536560

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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