All Saints, Brixworth

All Saints is a Grade I parish church on Church Street, Brixworth, Northamptonshire, in the Diocese of Peterborough, and one of the largest Anglo-Saxon churches to survive substantially in England.

Overview

Historic England dates the church to the seventh, tenth, thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. The fabric is ironstone and lias rubble with reused Roman tiles in the voussoirs, and a nineteenth-century plain tiled roof. The plan is a nave, chancel with polygonal apse, south chapel and west tower. A four-bay seventh-century round-headed arcade on each side of the nave has double voussoirs of Roman tiles; blocked seventh-century openings from the nave to a former ambulatory survive at semi-basement level beside the apse.

The west tower’s lower stage is seventh-century; a large tenth-century semi-circular stair turret projects on the west. The upper stage and broach spire are fourteenth-century. The listing records conversion from a seventh-century monastic basilica to a parish church in the tenth century, after devastation at the Danish invasion of 876, and an extensive restoration of 1865 that removed a thirteenth-century south aisle, porch and chancel. A probably ninth-century eagle of St John is carved in the west jamb of the south door.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1054866
• British Listed Buildings
• All Saints Church Brixworth