All Hallows, Lamport, Northamptonshire

I Location

Site Location: Lamport
National Grid Reference: SP 758 746
County: traditional: Northamptonshire
now: Northamptonshire
Diocese: medieval: Lincoln
now: Peterborough from 1539
Dedication: medieval: All Hallows 1458
now (or name of monument): All Hallows
Type of building/monument: Parish church

II General Description

: Exterior from SE.

: Interior to E.

: Interior to NW.

From the outside, All Hallows appears entirely 18thc. but for the W tower, the lower parts of which are 12thc.; the upper 13thc. with a battlement and a pyramid roof with a spike added on top. Inside, the nave arcade, of three bays, and the tower arch are 13thc. The first addition to the 13thc. church was the Isham chapel, on the N side of the chancel, added by Sir Justinian Isham in 1672 and built by Henry Jones of Walgrave. The rest was rebuilt following a bequest of Sir Justinian (d.1737) by the architect William Smith of Warwick. The work was completed by 1744. Since then a vestry has been added to the S of the chancel to the design of G. G. Bodley (1879). The only 12thc. work is the plain W doorway, a window above it, and a plain window in the second storey of the S tower wall. Only the W window is described; the other work being completely plain.

III Exterior Features

2. Windows

(i) Tower W window

: Tower, W doorway and window.

: Tower, W window.

Round-headed and continuous with a chamfer. The head is an arcuated lintel, rectangular at the top, decorated with a continuous groove on the face, running right around it some 0.10m from the edge.

VII History

The main tenant in 1086 was Fulcher, who held 4 hides and 1 virgate from Walter the Fleming. Smaller holdings were in the hands of St Edmundsbury Abbey (1 virgate and 1 bovate) and Countess Judith (1 bovate). Lamport's status as the mother church of Faxton was confirmed by an act of Archbishop Richard Dover in 1174-81, which upheld the rector of Lamport's claim that the right of sepulture in Faxton pertained to Lamport, as mother church from ancient times. The monks of Faxton, however, were to receive a perpetual pension to compensate them. Later rectors of Lamport sought t escape paying it. The advowson of Lamport was in the hands of the lords of the manor of Wahull. Fulcher's descendant, Sir Peter Malsover, presented William de Wanda to the rectory in 1217.

Benefice of Maidwell with Draughton and Lamport with Faxton.

VIII Comments/Opinions

IX Bibliography

J. Bridges, The History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire, Compiled from the manuscript collections of the late learned antiquary J.Bridges, Esq., by the Rev. Peter Whalley, Oxford, 1791, II, 112-16.
G. Isham, All Saints' (All Hallow's) Lamport, 1950 (abbrev. edition 1998).
N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Northamptonshire, Harmondsworth, 1961, rev. by B. Cherry, 1973, 284-86.
RCHME Report, uncatalogued.
Victoria County History: Northamptonshire, IV (1937), 199f.