Visitors are always welcome - click here for times of Services.

Overlooking the village is the church of All Saints, built of local stone. With its pointed lancet windows, high Chancel arch and buttresses John Betjeman thought it had all the hallmarks of the well known Victorian architect G E Street but the chance discovery of a signed plan and elevation drawing of the church dated in 1849 has confirmed that the architect was John Hayward the then Diocesan Architect of The Exeter Diocese. At that time all of Cornwall lay in the Exeter Diocese but in the 1870s the Truro Diocese was created.

With boom of the mining industry in the mid 1880s – Herodsfoot was noted for its production of silver, lead and two minerals that are the trade mark of Herodsfoot throughout the world, Bournonite and Tetrahedrite, the village really began to grow. The Rev. Robert Scott, Rector of St Cubys, Duloe at that time decided Herodsfoot needed its own church – until then there had only been a small building in the village used by the Bible Christians – and he took the lead in the fundraising to obtain the land and to build All Saints. W E Gladstone was one of those who contributed to the cost of building the church. Herodsfoot thus became a completely independent Parish with its own Vicar. We have recently, through this website, made contact with the great-grandson of its first Vicar in 1850, the Rev. Newling

All Saints Church from the village	All Saints - click to go inside

In 1936 St Cubys and All Saints were re-joined and became the United Benefice of Duloe and Herodsfoot although both parishes were independent. Since then we have shared Rectors/Priests in Charge with, in the earlier days, a Curate living in the Vicarage in Herodsfoot with particular responsibility for Herodsfoot parish. One of the most dearly loved of these was the Rev. Edgar Faull, a blind priest who was here during WW II and for some years afterwards. Quite recently the Benefice has been enlarged to include the Parishes of Morval and St Pinnock with the Rev Gill Lonsdale now looking after all the churches as well as being our Rural Dean.

Unfortunately after 150 years All Saints needed considerable repair and restoration which was estimated in 1999 to be approaching £40,000 but which, due to inflation, rapidly rose to over £70,000. The Parish is the 7th smallest in the Truro Diocese and with a population of some 140 over the age of 18 the task of raising such a large sum from such a small population was, to say the least, daunting.

Fundraising started in 1999 with various, lectures, talks, plays, a 3 Day 150th Anniversary and Millennium Festival in 2000 and many others events too numerous to mention we were able to start work in 2001 and by 2004 a repair and restoration work programme on the outside and the inside of the church had been completed and paid for resulting in a much drier and community useful church but work was still necessary on the roof, high level masonry, coping stones etc. and so we applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund through English Heritage for a grant towards this work. It was decided by English Heritage that the church should be completely re-roofed and last year we were awarded a grant for this work.

The estimated total of the whole programme from 2001 is £155,000, we have paid for the work already carried out and, hopefully, the work on the roof will start in September 2005 and is due to complete in March 2006 when we believe that All Saints will be good for another 150 years.

How Can You Help?

Please consider an on-line donation to The Friends of All Saints - click here for details.

All Saints is very important to Herodsfoot, in that, as well as being a well loved place of worship, it is also the only public meeting place remaining within the parish. We have no village hall, church hall, community centre or school where we can gather for such occasions as concerts, recitals, lectures, plays, Harvest Suppers, social events, exhibitions of parish plans and therefore it is very necessary that the church is made as ‘community use’ friendly as possible and to this end we applied for and received a grant from the Heritage Lottery ‘Awards for All’ fund in 2002 which has enabled us to give the church a fresh water supply, a servery unit with disguised sink and work top and to replace our old stacking chairs. We have also re-sited some pews and this has greatly increased the floor space at the back of the church for community use.

Click here if you would like to know how you can help

What's On

Since 1999 there has been a full programme of fundraising events each year, details of some of these may be seen on this website and the details of current events will be found both on the website and in the Newsletter.

Click the picture to go back down to the village