Inside All Saints

The interior of All Saints Church, Weston has many interesting features. The box pews are probably 18th century. A lady called Caroline Spence, who died in 1917, left the income from £1000 to the vicar and churchwardens for the upkeep of the church, so long as the pulpit and box pews remain as they are and are not modernised. (I'm sure that's a real blessing to a 21st century vicar!). As interesting as the box pews are, they are hardly conducive to modern worship, though this church does have a larger 'musicians' pew' with a music stand in the middle. 

Nor is the elaborate 3 tier pulpit much use these days. It is late 17th century and has a clerk's desk, a vicar's reading desk on the middle level and the pulpit at the top. The fancy carved canopy is a 'sounding board', designed to help project the speaker's voice to the congregation. 

On the lower desk, there is an 18th century church bible displayed. 

The various stained glass windows seemed mostly to be Victorian and Edwardian. Those in 'the Squire's Parlour' - the family pew to the left of the altar - are memorials to members of the Spence and Dawson families, descendants of the Vavasours who were Lords of the Manor from the 1400s onwards. 'The Squire's Parlour' is more like a sitting room than a pew! It even had its own fireplace, put in in 1801. The squire of the time, William Vavasour declared that it 'answered very well', which was no doubt a comfort to the ordinary parishioners freezing in the unheated nave! 

 

One of the windows, a memorial to Emma Dawson (1825-1880), who was a renowned philanthropist, depicts in one panel the Redcar lifeboat, which she commissioned.