About Us
INTRODUCTION
All Saints is a friendly, family focussed church with two services each Sunday. The 8.00 am service of Said Holy Communion is a quiet and reflective service that lasts around 40 minutes and is much appreciated by those with busy lives. The Main Service of Sung Holy Communion at 9.30 am is a relaxed and informal time of prayer, praise and hymns. We have a Junior Church that meets in the Lady Chapel each Sunday during that service, with children helping to lead the All Age Service on the first Sunday of each month and participating during all main services, often telling the congregation about their day’s activities before leading them in their own prayers of intercession or thanksgiving.
Tea, coffee, soft drinks and cakes or biscuits are normally available in church after the Main Sunday services enabling members and visitors to enjoy fellowship before departing.
All Saints is a warm and airy Norman church with heating. Toilet and kitchen facilities are available in the adjacent church hall. Situated atop Newchurch Shute with commanding views across the Arreton Valley, its distinctive white wooden tower and grey spire form a beacon visible from many parts of the centre of the Island.
As a well tended church and churchyard, it is proving a popular venue for weddings and there is a booklet available free of charge explaining how changes to qualifying connections enable many couples to marry at All Saints by way of family association. Subject to certain conditions the church may remarry divorcees or offer a Service of Prayer and Dedication. The booklet also guides you in planning the service with the vicar, Reverend Janice O’Shaughnessy. If you are considering marriage and want to know more about arranging a wedding at All Saints - please call the Parish Office on 01983 865504.
The church also welcomes candidates for baptism or confirmation of faith and includes baptism as part of the main church service in order that there can be support from the whole church family.
Funeral services in the church are compassionate and comforting, supporting the bereaved in their time of need whilst paying due homage to the recently departed. The environment is peaceful and there are not the time constraints that apply at the Isle of Wight Crematorium, thus providing family and friends an appropriate opportunity to pay their respects. You may gather in the church hall prior to the service, where tea and coffee may be served or meetin the nearby Pointer Inn. Church ladies can also cater for a wake in the church hall.
Whilst the churchyard is closed for burials, an adjacent consecrated cemetery, managed by the Parish Council, is available for burials and interment of ashes. Alternatively the local funeral director, William Hall, has a natural burial ground one mile away at Springwood.
A Tree of Light is placed in the church each Advent for people to write their thoughts or prayers on stars or candles in memory of loved ones and hang them on the tree.
ADDITIONAL SERVICES
Mothering Sunday: at which the children present flowers, provided by our flower ladies, to all the ladies in the congregation.
Good Friday Walk of Witness: a four mile walk from All Saints to Arreton (or vice-versa) during which we stop for readings and hymns as we build the stations of the cross.
Easter Sunrise Service: depending on the timing of Easter, the service starts in church art around 6.00 am as we welcome the Light of Christ before celebrating Holy Communion outdoors to the sound of birds at the breaking of dawn. Afterwards we adjourn to the Church Hall for breakfast and fellowship, often being joined by visitors to Newchurch.
A Service of Remembrance for the Bereaved is held each year at All Saints at the end of May or beginning of June. It is a short service of prayers, readings and hymns during which candles are lit in remembrance of those who have departed and after leaving the church, we gather in the churchyard whilst doves are released.
Flower Festival Service: the annual Flower Festival concludes with a service of thanksgiving on Sunday evening and usually includes a hymn specially written for this occasion.
Pet Service: we welcome all creatures great and small as they accompany their owners to an afternoon service held at the time of the Feast of St Francis, who is depicted with animals in a beautiful window in the Lady Chapel. Members of Amazon World support this service, bringing along one of their macaws.
Lights of Love Service: an outdoor service is held each year to raise money for the Island’s Earl Mountbatten Hospice. People from across the parish join Shanklin Town Brass Band to sing carols, paper candles are hung on a Christmas Tree in memory of loved ones as a collection is made by representatives of the Hospice
Carol Services: there is a Darkness to Light service to mark the start of Advent and carols in Alverstone Old School Hall and this year Newchurch Male Voice Choir will raise money for the church with their Christmas medley of Carols and Christmas Songs will play at our main carol service in All Saints
Christingle: an ever popular service which sees the church packed with over 300 children and adults celebrating the birth of Jesus with traditional Christingle Oranges, raising money for the Children’s Society.
Nativity Service: presented by the Junior Church to promote awareness of the plight of tens of thousands of children who wake up in the United Kingdom in a place they cannot call the home and to raise money for the charity Shelter.
JUNIOR CHURCH
The Junior Church undertakes projects to understand the life of Jesus and thus provide them with awareness of the moral values that underpin the Christian faith.
These projects include promoting the Food and Essentials Bank, Fairtrade products, learning about life in South African townships and supporting the sermons when asked to act out a related scenario.
They help lead the All Age Services and at all main services talk to us about their day’s activities before leading us in their own prayers of intercession or thanksgiving
SCHOOLS
All Saints has strong links with Newchurch Primary School with Reverend Janice leading school assemblies and the school holding its Harvest and Christmas Services in All Saints, and visiting the church as part of its teaching associated with the National Curriculum.
The Church visits are extended to the local Scout Group to assist in achieving the Faith Badge.
MAGAZINE
We publish eleven editions a year of a magazine covering the parishes of Newchurch and Arreton that costs 50p per month collected or is available for £11 per year including postage to UK addresses.
EVENTS
All Saints is a busy and proactive church. Its fund raising events include Quiz nights accompanied by a meal, a Bingo with Fish & Chips night, the Flower Festival, screening of the Last Night of the Proms, lunches and suppers, concerts, a talent show, a fashion show. coffee mornings etc
Support to raffles is provided by many local and Island enterprises including: Amazon World, the Garlic Farm, Springbank Nurseries, Yates Brewery, the Pointer Inn, Ager Nurseries, Bartletts Garages, Wight Salads, the Parish Council, Groundsell, Newchurch Parish Sports and Community Association, Ryde Superbowl, Hovertravel, Raj Premier, Morrison’s, Waitrose and Wightlink.
FRIENDS OF ALL SAINTS
The Friends of All Saints raises money to support the maintenance of the fabric of the church and its hall.
Its fund raising events include a Winter Warmer at the Garlic Farm, a live broadcast in All Saints Church of the BBC’s Last Night at the Proms, Murder Mysteries at the Pointer Inn, an after hours “meet the animals” visit to Amazon World, afternoon teas, sponsored appeals for specific projects.
The Chair of the Friends is Colin Boswell, proprietor of the Garlic Farm
THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
The church celebrated its 900th anniversary in 1987 and is a fine example of a Norman Church with some remaining evidence of its pre-Norman origins.
It is one of only three English churches with an ancient sanctuary door still in place (Durham and Westminster are the other two). Over the South door there is the crest of William III (of Orange) dated 1700 with the face of the Lion Rampant being an image of King Willliam.
The Dillington Mortuary Chapel has a number tombs whose covering slabs have unusually well preserved and finely engraved crests and lettering
The following is extracted from the Quinquennial Report published in October 2011 by the Church Architect, Mr Ian G Smith
Standing prominently at the north end of Newchurch village, All Saints Church is visible from many points in the central belt of the Island; being cruciform in plan, with a south porch and tower it dominates the Arreton Valley.
One of six Churches given by William FitzOsbern to Lyra Abbey in Normandy, it was given to the See of Bristol by Henry VIII; All Saints has throughout its life had many additions, in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries; the Victorian restoration of 1883, by AR Barker, remodelled part of the interior.
The original Church is still quite easily identifiable in the Nave, North and South Aisles, the crossing and the north wall of the Chancel, with the later extensions of the South Transept and the Chancel evident in the treatment of the windows which are wider and of three light style.
Constructed of random stone under a steeply pitched and tiled roof, the modest exterior is off set by the surprisingly grand interior; with a soaring timber clad Nave roof, and massive stone columns with octagonal piers; with double chamfered arches progressing to the crossing and the Chancel.
The square tower over the stone rendered South Porch, being of timber weather-boarding (around 1800) is unusual on the Island, housing the six bell peal, four of which were founded in 1810, the other two are of 16th and 17th century vintage.
Major benefactors of the Church were the Dillington family who have laid 8 vaults in the north transept and also in the south transept; and of historical interest within the Church are the oak pulpit of 1725, the oak door from the Porch, the Pelican Lectern (l7thC), the wall tablets, the stained glass east window by Kempe (1909), the Creed and Commandments boards in cusped Gothic frames on the west wall; and the panel over the south door with the royal arms of William III, and dated 1700.
Listing; Listed Grade I.
Ref SZ58NE
1352- 0/1/144
18/01/67
High Street (East Side) - Church of All Saints - Listed as Grade I
The listing in the Twenty Ninth List of Buildings of Special Architectural and Historic Interest, dated 14 February 1992, of the Isle of Wight, gives a particularly detailed description of the history of the Church, the windows, and the historic features, relying on much of the information contained in the Buildings of England, David W. Lloyd and Nikolaus Pevsner, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight this has been updated now having a separate volume on the Isle of Wight of 2006.
High Street (East side) -Dillington Sundial in All Saints Churchyard — listed Grade II
Ref: SZS8NE
1352-0/1/145
Sundial, 1678 by Robert Marks of London, Baluster shaped stone base to sundial, about 1.000mm in height on plinth of three square stone steps. The sundial is missing, the sundial originally stood on the bowling green at Knighton Gorges, but following the demolition of the great house, Squire Bisset gave it to the parish in 1826, when it was erected in the Churchyard, historical interest as one of the early relics of Knighton Gorges.