For 28 years from 1860 a Wednesday evening service was held in a cottage room in Coldharbour. In 1888/9 a small mission room was built in Coldharbour Lane, and later enlarged to serve as the first All Saints' Church. The district of Batford was transferred in 1949 from the parish of Wheathampstead to the parish of Harpenden. Many new houses were built in the area and the Coldharbour Lane church became inadequate to serve the needs of the district.
In 1955 Mr Dolphin Smith, a local farmer, gave the site of the present church and a church building fund was opened. In 1961 a planning committee was formed and Mr E. P. Wilson, an architect and a member of the congregation at Coldharbour Lane was asked to design the new building. The shape and style of the building and furnishings were intended to reflect the best in contemporary experiments in church worship and architecture.
The foundation stone was laid on 17th June 1964. The Service of Consecration of the completed church was conducted on 28th May 1965, the Eve of the Feast of the Ascension, by the late Michael Gresford Jones, then Bishop of St Albans, who presided at the first eucharist early the following morning,
From the darkness of the church doorway, walled by Westmorland boulders, you enter into light pouring into the lobby area by way of a dome window through which could be seen the stainless steel lantern cross 60 feet above ground. (Now the domed window is somewhat cloudy making this more difficult.)
Going into the church itself you will see that everyday products have been used - domestic building blocks, warm in tone, for the walls; steel trusses to span the roof space; deal, cut from Russian redwood trees, to line the roof and form the benches set on three sides of a square; slabs from London pavements to make the floor. Simply plainness with no decoration was the original vision, but of course the church is now enlivened and softened by banners and children's art work on the walls, and wonderful flower arrangements.
The sanctuary steps and paving are of Portland stone; the Lord's Table (altar), a massive wooden table; the eleven foot high oak cross behind it shows the marks of the carpenter's adze and superimposed is the processional cross of brass, copper and aluminium tubing, in fact a composition of many smaller crosses representing all the saints. To the right the combined lectern and pulpit brings into focus the proclamation of the Word. Opposite the sanctuary you see the font which is a roughly rounded block of coarse-grained Cornish granite. This is set within the baptistery apse on a pavement of blue Staffordshire quarry tiles. A glimpse of the stones outside may evoke rocks and running water. (These stones were removed and replaced by gravel a few years ago to reduce vandalism.) Vestries and a spacious hall with stage adjoin the church. The outside walls are of white gault clay bricks from Cambridgeshire, and the roofs are of Welsh slate.
On the other side of the church lobby is the light and airy church hall, which benefits from a small stage, storage areas, toilets (including disabled) and a kitchen. The hall also has its own entrance from street level. Additionally, off the church entrance lobby is a small room, previously used as an office but now mainly used as a crèche room.
Gordon Facer, a handyman at Rothamsted who had lived in Harpenden all his life, became a very faithful and much loved member of the congregation in his later years. On his death in the mid '80s, he left a modest bequest to the church with instructions that it should be used for children's work. He loved children, but as a batchelor, had none of his own. Uncertain at first how to use the money, the church finally agreed to use it to open a building fund for an additional meeting room, to be used for children's and other meetings, and to be named the Gordon Facer Room. It was opened in the late 80's and furnished with easy chairs and may be accessed directly from the car park or from the main hall via a short corridor. Its informality and intimacy contribute a valuable additional resource to the church.
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