All Saints’ Church, Boughton Aluph

All Saints’ Church stands in the quiet village of Boughton Aluph near Ashford in Kent. Built in the thirteenth century by Adulphus to replace a Saxon church, it was enlarged in the fourteenth century by Sir Thomas Aldon, a courtier of Edward III. The church was restored in 1878 and granted Grade I listed status in 1957. Extensive renovations took place in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including the cleaning of windows in 2009. It remains an active place of worship and hosts the annual Stour Music Festival every June. The church’s architecture reflects its long history. The chancel and chapel date from the thirteenth century, with fifteenth-century east windows and a seventeenth-century porch. Most of the rest of the building comes from the fourteenth century, including the nave, aisles, transepts and crossing tower. The walls are mainly flint and rubble, with brick used for the porch and buttresses. Inside, the nave has four bays with octagonal piers on moulded bases, and the crossing piers continue the nave arcade on a larger scale. Visitors find a church rich in detail. The west door has an eighteenth-century plank door in a fourteenth-century surround, while the north door is a seventeenth-century plank door with plain metal hinges. The south transept window is a modern work by Leonie Seliger, replacing one damaged in the Second World War. Inside, there are piscinas, a sedile, wall paintings, a wooden screen in the north chapel, and seventeenth-century altar rails. The nave holds an octagonal font, and several windows contain medieval glass. The churchyard contains the graves of the famous countertenor Alfred Deller and his wife.