All Saints, Newmarket

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Newmarket is semi-detached Suffolk really, a handsome little town on a peninsula sticking out into neighbouring Cambridgeshire. Two substantial churches are set back behind each side of its long high street, either of which could be taken as the parish church, and there is an interesting reason for this, for All Saints serves a parish that was in Cambridgeshire until 1895. The border between the two counties ran down the middle of the high street (the town hall and railway station were both in Cambridgeshire) and there were some interesting disputes involving the separate county police forces on a Saturday night. More than this, All Saints parish separated St Mary and Exning parishes from the rest of Suffolk, so that they were on an island of Suffolk within Cambridgeshire. The 20th Century saw a united Newmarket all in Suffolk, with All Saints serving the eastern part of the town.

The church itself was designed in the 1870s by the Lowestoft architect WO Chambers. It was built on the site of an earlier church, and Mortlock says that part of the old tower was incorporated in the new, although this is hard to see from the outside. The tower sits at the end of a south aisle, with the nave beside it allowed to have an impressive west window as a result.

It has to be said that Mortlock rarely had an unkind word to say about anyone or anything, but he described All Saints as heavy and uninspired. Buildings of this kind are usually an end in themselves, but perhaps Chambers wanted to recreate that medieval feel of accretion, for the view from the north in particular looks as if it has been several times added to in different styles from Norman to Decorated, although of course this is not the case. The church never appears to be open, but there is a small churchyard on the south side, and here there are two things of interest, a mounting block set against a buttress (well, this is Newmarket), and the elliptical memorial tomb to William Parkinson.

Simon Knott, September 2021

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