All Saints Church, Claverley

All Saints Church stands in the village of Claverley, Shropshire, among red sandstone buildings. The church is an active Anglican parish with a tall tower, north and south aisles, and a three-bay chancel. Its plan includes a nave, clerestory, and two chapels, one now used as a vestry. The tower has buttresses added in the 15th century and was rebuilt in 1902. The churchyard contains a 14th-century cross moved from the roadway and a lychgate of probable 19th-century brick construction. The church is worth visiting for its long history and fine architecture. It began in the 7th century and was rebuilt by Roger de Montgomerie in the 11th century. The nave roof and chancel are Perpendicular in style, while the chancel arch is Decorated. The interior holds a 50-foot frieze of fighting knights painted around 1200, possibly illustrating scenes from Prudentius’s poem *Psychomachia*. The font is Norman, and the pulpit is Jacobean, carved with rosettes under arcading. Inside, visitors find a Norman north arcade with round arches on circular piers. The tower arch has scalloped capitals, and the ‘seat of penitence’ projects from a 15th-century buttress. The east window’s stained glass, by Frederick Preedy in 1858, depicts the Te Deum. The churchyard’s yew tree is said to be 2,500 years old, and the war memorial records parish losses from both world wars. The pipe organ dates from 1906, and eight bells include two cast in 1703.