All Saints Church

Dale Abbey, Stanton by Dale, Derbyshire DE7 4PN

Tel: 01159 324584

All Saints Church, Dale Abbey is the only church in England which shares its roof with a farm. Apart from electrics and some old radiators the interior has not been altered since around 1650 and retains its box pews. There is a medieval wall painting and a leaning pulpit dated 1634. The communion table, actually a Jacobean cupboard, is in front of the reading desk, whereas normally it should be behind and there is in effect a three-decker pulpit arrangement. In about 1485 the building next door to the church became the infirmary for the nearby abbey and the church became the infirmary chapel, the sick being brought through doors both downstairs and on the gallery where they could see the service from the low balcony.

More recently the adjoining building became the Blue Ball Inn. Clergy would robe in the inn and enter the church through the downstairs door, blocked up in the 1820's but still clearly visible.

Dale Abbey used to be a 'peculiar' and did not come under the authority of the Diocesan Bishop. It had its own Lay bishop, Lord Stanhope, whose Episcopal throne is in the church. It was thus Derbyshire's first cathedral.. There was a court at Dale with the authority to issue licences for weddings, which meant that banns did not have to read and so Dale became the Gretna Green of the Midlands in the seventeenth and eigthteenth centuries, with many weddings being performed. There is a plaque in the church describing one of the Lay Bishops. It is said to be the smallest Anglican church in England still in regular use.