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All Saints, Pontefract, All Saints, Yorkshire, West Riding

Location
(53°41′45″N, 1°18′6″W)
Pontefract, All Saints
SE 462 224
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Yorkshire, West Riding
now West Yorkshire
  • Rita Wood
None

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Description

A large medieval ruin, with aisled nave, N and S porches, tower and transepts; chancel with chapel and vestry.

It was reduced to a roofless ruin during the Civil War sieges of the nearby castle. Several rebuildings have followed, the latest in 1967 providing a new nave within the medieval footprint.

This was the parish church of Pontefract before St Giles took precedence in 1789, but later All Saints was made an independent parish.

'The core of the nave and chancel is probably 12th or 13th century' (Ryder 1993, 169).

No sculpture but this site forms part of a possible group, see History, and the entry for Pontefract castle, chapel of St Clement.

History

The church may have a pre-Conquest origin as it is in the area called Kirkeby and within the Anglo-Saxon cemetery. It was granted to the Priory, along with St Nicholas's hospital and St Clement's chapel, at its foundation c.1090 (Roberts and Whittick, 2013, 71, fig. 1).

A Saxon church has been excavated opposite the white house between the castle and All Saints.

Bibliography

I. Roberts and C. Whittick, 'Pontefract: A Review of the Evidence for the Medieval Town, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 85/1 (2013) 68-96.

P. F. Ryder, Medieval Churches of West Yorkshire, West Yorkshire Archaeology Service, Wakefield, 1993.