Visiting the Church

We are normally open Mondays 11.30-3.30, Thursdays 10-12 and 6-8pm, Saturdays 12-3 and Sunday morning, where the 10.30 service alternates between St Oswald’s and All Saints.

All Saints Horton is a fine Victorian inner-city parish church built in 1864, by local Landowner and MP Sir Francis Sharp-Powell of Horton Hall. In 1976 the church was re-ordered with a nave altar, a relocated font and parish rooms with toilets, office and kitchen.

With funding for resources provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund All Saints Church is pleased to offer schools a range of hands-on, curriculum-based activities designed to engage learners through memorable experiences through workshops for Key Stage 1, 2 and 3 children.

In the past ten years, we have:

  • developed the vestry as a meeting room, with baby toilets
  • put in new central heating throughout, with additional radiant heating in the chancel
  • renovated the nave lighting with the original brass circlets
  • replaced the lighting in the chancel
  • Created a worship space in the chancel
  • repaired the organ
  • created an open space at the rear of the nave
  • installed a disabled toilet
  • created an IT suite for the community out of the Vint chapel
  • installed cast iron gates in both the south and north porch
  • Repaired the spire and upper levels of the building
  • Raised the ground level at the main entrance to make it level access
  • Restored roof above organ – see below!
  • Restored fractured window capitals

The high quality interior, in which only the finest materials and craftsmanship were used, is of the same unified style as the exterior and contains much fine wood and stone carving. There are outstanding stained glass windows. The pulpit and font are of intricately carved alabaster and the encaustic floor tiles cover extensive areas. The Hedgland organ (rebuilt J. J. Binns) is used most Sundays.

Below is the tower of All Saints – can you work out what this is?  You are looking down the inside of the tower from high up; you can just see the fine Victorian floor tiles on the ground, in the centre of the picture.

Restoration of the metal work has started.  Look at the pulpit and see where the conservators have done paint scrapes and revealed the astonishing colours underneath the dreadful 1960s bronze paint.  The old work by Francis Skidmore shows the quality of this premier ironworker of his generation, here in All Saints. Some of his other work is in the Victoria and Albert museum in London, and in the Herbert Museum in Coventry, such is the quality.

Lloyd and Smith have restored the window stonework, where metal rods expanded and fractured the stone.  See the photo of damage. We have been blessed with grants from
* Bramall Trust £20,000
* Lord Barnby £5000
* Spooner Trust £5000
* Yorkshire Historic Churches Trust  £6000
* Gateway Grant (National Churches Trust) £8000
* Wolfson Foundation £8000
* Donation £1000
* Yorkshire Historic Churches Trust £4685
We are incredibly grateful for all these grants, especially the 2nd tranche of funding from Yorkshire Historic Churches, who gave over and above to a fund that  needed topping up by a precise amount.
A Church with an Electoral Roll of 42, in an area of high deprivation would never have been able to raise this money itself.