We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.

All Saints, Coleshill, Berkshire

Location
(51°38′33″N, 1°39′37″W)
Coleshill
SU 236 938
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Berkshire
now Oxfordshire
medieval Salisbury
now Oxford
  • Ron Baxter
07 May 1990

Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=7812.

Find out how to cite the CRSBI website here.

Description

Coleshill is a village in the far W of the county, on the Wiltshire border (formed by the River Cole) and only 7 miles NE of Swindon. The village clusters around a junction on the B4019 between Swindon and Faringdon, and is best known for Coleshill Park to the S, site of a major 17thc house that was gutted by fire in 1952 and subsequently pulled down.

The church is in the centre of the village. As Pevsner (1966) remarked, it makes an odd group from outside. It consists of a Perp W tower, and a nave with a N aisle and, on the S side, an aisle that has been absorbed into a 14thc transeptal chapel and a 2-storeyed gabled porch alongside the tower. This is taller than the nave or the chapel. The chancel was remodelled in 1780. 12thc. work remains in the S nave arcade, and in fragments reset in the exterior wall of the chancel.

History

The church was not mentioned in DS, when the manor was held in demesne by the Nunnery of St Mary, Winchester. At the end of the 12thc., Abbess Clarice granted her lands in Coleshill to William de Coleshill in fee farm, and in 1222 his descendant, Robert Quit claimed his right in advowson of the church to the abbey, which retained patronage until 1354.

Features

Exterior Features

Exterior Decoration

Miscellaneous

Interior Features

Arcades

Nave
Comments/Opinions

Zarnecki (card index) has compared the capitals with those at Clewer (Berks). The trumpet scallops indicate a date in the 1170s or '80s.

Bibliography

N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England. Berkshire. Harmondsworth,1966, 117-18.

G. Tyack, S. Bradley and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England. Berkshire. New Haven and London 2010, 244.

Victoria County History: Berkshire IV (1924), 517-23.