Qualla: All Saints' Church, Brixworth

All Saints' Church, Brixworth: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Gunns, CC BY-SA 2.0. Walk into All Saints' Church at Brixworth and look up. The arches above your head are made of slim red Roman bricks - tiles that were fired in the second or third century, used in some now-vanished building in either Towcester or Leicester, abandoned when the legions left, and reclaimed five hundred years later by Anglo-Saxon masons who needed building material and had no idea how to make their own bricks. The church around them was begun in the late eighth or early ninth century, perhaps by King Offa of Mercia, perhaps by his successor Coenwulf. It is the largest English church that remains substantially in its Anglo-Saxon form. People have prayed here for twelve hundred years.

Image: Chris Gunns | CC BY-SA 2.0

All Saints' Church, Brixworth: Mercia's Lost Monastery

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Salmon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before there was a church, there was a monastery. The Peterborough Chronicle records that Brixworth Abbey was founded under Seaxwulf, bishop of Mercia, before the death of King Wulfhere of Mercia in 675 AD. Mercia in that era was the dominant Anglo-Saxon kingdom - the territory t...

Image: John Salmon | CC BY-SA 2.0

All Saints' Church, Brixworth: Roman Brick in an English Church

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. Anglo-Saxon builders rarely fired their own bricks. They built with stone, with timber, with thatch and turf, but the technology for making the thin red Roman building bricks had largely been lost in Britain after the legions withdrew. When the masons at Brixworth needed material...

Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

All Saints' Church, Brixworth: The Ambulatory Below Ground

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. Most strange features at Brixworth turn out to be original. The current building has an underground passageway, called an ambulatory, that runs around the outside of the original apse below ground level. Steps once led down to it. A barrel vault covered it. Its purpose was almost...

Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

All Saints' Church, Brixworth: The Eagle of St John

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Motacilla, CC BY-SA 4.0. Just inside the Norman south door, a small piece of carved stone is set into the wall: a relief of an eagle, wings spread, head turned. It is the eagle of John the Evangelist - one arm of what was once a complete carved cross, dating most likely from the ninth century. The carvin...

Image: Motacilla | CC BY-SA 4.0

All Saints' Church, Brixworth: Bells, Registers and the War Graves

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gordon Cragg, CC BY-SA 2.0. The west tower holds a ring of six bells. Hugh Watts of Leicester cast the second, third, fourth and fifth in 1622. Henry Bagley of Chacombe cast the tenor in 1683. The Whitechapel Bell Foundry cast the treble in 1993 - a foundry that itself dated from 1570 and would close in 201...

Image: Gordon Cragg | CC BY-SA 2.0