All Saints, Westlegate

All Saints, Westlegate. . Though now surrounded by a tower block, a large office complex and a department store, the church remains the focal point of Westlegate and All Saints Green., What , The Church as it now appears it mainly 14th and 15th century. The tower is very plain without buttresses, and the nave windows with 'flat' arches and strong vertical emphasis are in the late 15th-century Perpendicular style. The chancel windows are slightly earlier. The large east window is in the 14th-century Decorated style but is, in fact, Victorian., Extensive alterations to the church can be traced, for instance, the porch must bave been a later addition because it 'laps over' the nave plinth, and rougher masonry above its roof shows it was once higher. Similar rough areas where the west side of the porch meets the nave show there was once a stair turret to an upper room ('parvise'), and an area of flint foundation beside the last nave buttress where the rood-loft stair turret stood., In the windows in the north aisle, fragments of medieval coloured glass remain, these include remnants of a Holy Kindred window, the figure of St James the Less holding his fuller's club (which looks like a hockey stick) and St Jude carrying a boat. There is also a 1921 World War I memorial window by F. C. Eden (1864-1944)., When , Very little evidence of the earliest structure remains, it includes the stump of thicker wall by the tower end of the arcade and the fact that that south wall of the nave and the north arcade wall lean outwards., In the 15th century the church was altered and enlarged, with an elegant framework of columns and arches supporting a handsome, canopy-like roof. The north wall was replaced by the present arcade and the south wall was made more elegant by modelling it with arches. The chancel and tower arches were enlarged. A fine new carved font (now in St Julian's) was placed at the end of the nave., The church would have been adorned with painted screens, altars, stained glass, rich fabrics, images and candles - all of which were removed during the Reformation. In their place, boards inscribed with the Ten Commandments and a new pulpit would have emphasised the centrality of the Bible and the preaching of the Word., From the 1860s until 1973 All Saints was furnished in high-Anglican tradition. There was an elaborate reredos. The Virgin and Child were represented in a stained glass window over the high altar (now in St John Timberhill) and in a statue, right of the chancel arch. A new rood beam was erected. Choir stalls were placed in the chancel, and a side altar and an organ in the north aisle., All Saints became redundant in 1973. In 1979 it was leased by the Norwich Historic Churches Trust to the All Saints Centre, who have repaired and altered it as a place of Christian hospitality. The chancel remains a consecrated chapel., Who , The bell near the tower screen was cast in 1647 by John Brend II who has his foundry nearby and is buried here., A memorial floor slab of 1735 (by the servery) commemorates Elizabeth Cox., A wall monument in the nave to William Clabburn commemorates one of the leading manufacturers of the famous Norwich Shawl.