Welcome to All Hallows

Wellingborough's Parish Church, Northamptonshire U.K.
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The South Aisle

A door in the wall of the south aisle leads to the Parvise Chamber above the porch and looks on to the Market Place where a weekly market has been held since the days of King John. As its name suggests it "looks though" into the inside of the Church. Originally it would have been used for a variety of purposes e.g. relic chamber, chapel, library, archives, treasury, meeting place and even as a bedroom for the priest. The Parvise Chamber was restored before the second world war. There are two small memorial windows with fragments of medieval glass and a stone coffin-lid with wheel cross, perhaps the top of a child's tomb, found in the Saxon burial ground on which the church was built.


This plaque,
 in memory of a former churchwarden, lists the incumbents of All Hallows since the 13th Century.

The two windows, in memory of Ellen Rose Saunders,
 were installed in 1936, they are a good example of the school which considered that windows, whilst having adequate colour, should still permit plenty of light. The subjects of these windows have historical links with the Church and the town.
The small Friar at the bottom of each window indicates that they were made by James Powell & Sons, Whitefriars, London.

 St. Frideswide
Patron Saint of Oxford

St. Catherine of Alexandria
Of "Catherine Wheel" fame; Patron Saint of Lacemakers (once an important local industry).

 

St. Hilda
Abbess of Whitby; ruled over a large community of monks and nuns from 657 to 680 AD and supervised the great Synod of Whitby (c 664) which bought the Celtic Church into line with that of Rome. Many Celtic missionaries were active in Mercia during the 7th century AD.

 St. Chad
Bishop of Lichfield, the original diocese of All Hallows and episcopal see of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia.

St. Guthlac
Founder of Croyland Abbey, the original patron of this church.

St. Hugh of Lincoln
All Hallows was in the diocese of Lincoln before the diocese of Peterborough was founded in 1541.