All Saints, Rudston

All Saints is a Grade I parish church on Church Lane (School Lane), Rudston, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, in the Diocese of York: a Norman and Early English church whose churchyard holds the Rudston Monolith, the tallest standing stone in Britain.

Overview

Historic England lists the church (1162387, Grade I, 30 June 1966). The listing describes a twelfth-century west tower, early thirteenth-century nave aisles, a late thirteenth-century chancel, and nineteenth-century belfry, porch and tracery alterations, in ashlar with red-tile repairs and slate roofs. The plan is a three-bay chancel, three-bay aisled nave, south porch and three-stage west tower. Nave windows are three-light square-headed openings with reticulated tracery. The chancel has a priest’s door with nook shafts, two-light windows with geometrical tracery, and a four-light east window. The tower has small lancets to the lower stage and two-light belfry openings with mid-wall shafts in round-headed openings, under a pyramidal roof behind a battlemented parapet.

Interior fittings include a twelfth-century tower arch, early thirteenth-century arcades with round piers, a late thirteenth-century chancel arch, early fourteenth-century sedilia with crocketed gables, a fourteenth-century piscina, and a twelfth-century font with alternating circle and lozenge ornament. The south aisle has a monument to the novelist Winifred Holtby, who is buried in the churchyard. About seven metres north of the church stands the separately listed Rudston Monolith (1083402, Grade I): a probable Bronze Age grey sandstone pillar about 8 metres high, the largest surviving monolith in the British Isles. The church is open in daylight hours on most days.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1162387
• Historic England: Rudston Monolith 1083402
• Rudston village: All Saints