Cole gives an interesting composition between the Prior of Spalding and the vicar of Moulton regarding a pension; likewise regarding portion of the vicarage.
One cannot but think with the erection of All Saints’, Moulton, began the church-building rivalry between the two neighbouring monasteries of Croyland and Spalding, which lasted until the dissolution of the greater abbeys. Croyland had built the Norman portion of the present church of Whaplode. Then Spalding Priory, about 1175, began the present Church of Moulton, the nave of which would be considerably larger than the Norman nave of Whaplode, and though Moulton nave is built in the Transitional Period, in a great number of its details it resembles Whaplode; for you have at Whaplode four shafted compound piers, while at Moulton you have the four shafts arranged round a central column forming part of the solid masonry, still all engaged and forming a solid pier of coursed masonry; next you have a further development of the idea—four larger and four smaller shafts placed alternately, but still engaged, almost immediately followed by the disengaged shafts of the Lancet Period, as at St. Mary’s, Weston.
The pier bases are similar to those at Whaplode, though they show the slight advance art had made, but at Moulton you will find a circular bench round the base. The Croyland monks, when they saw the church at Moulton was finer than theirs at Whaplode, not to be outdone by the younger monastery, lengthened the nave of Whaplode; and though Spalding long afterwards added a bay to the nave at Moulton, that at Whaplode is still the longest and narrowest nave in the district.
The capitals of Transitional work at Moulton are interesting—the stiff engaged leaves are all inclined one way, and follow one another round the necks of the capitals.
Mr. Sharpe says—
“In the pier capitals of the eastern part of the nave of Whaplode and the nave of Moulton churches we see the early efforts of the artists of the period to produce relief and to disengage the flowers and the leaf from the surface to which it was attached. The strong resemblance of the ornamentation of the capitals in these two churches leaves no doubt that the Transitional portion of the nave at Whaplode and the nave at Moulton are contemporaneous work, the same artists having probably been employed on the carved work of the naves.”
At Moulton an arch at one time apparently sprung from the westernmost pair of pillars, across the nave, from the engaged pillar rising through the capital of the nave pillar. There is a strong buttress at the back of each of these pillars, which are continued to the clerestory, and can be seen from the outside. There probably was a tower or campanile standing between the two pillars, which was pulled down probably in the Rectilinear Period, when the present tower was erected—one bay further to the west. The northern clerestory, which is Transitional and earlier than that of the south side, may be compared with that of Whaplode. The south clerestory is Late Transitional. In the Rectilinear Period, in 1400, the windows of the clerestories were altered and the present roof was built.
The aisles, originally only 10 feet wide, were in about 1310 widened to 17 feet, the south aisle being first done. Some of the original Transitional buttresses were re-used (the eastern and smaller ones), as was also the fine south Transitional doorway. The north aisle was done about 1320-25, and the original Transitional doorway was re-used. When the tower and spire were built about 1380, the aisles were lengthened, like the nave. Sharpe writes on the tower and spire: “Their relative proportions may be pronounced faultless.... The tower and spire may be taken as the most perfect realisation of the Rectilinear form of this noble addition to the English parish church to be found anywhere.”
The walls of the tower appear to have settled as the work progressed, but the architects of those days were equal to the emergency, and so rectified the work as the building progressed, and so well was it done that the tower has kept its perpendicular for five centuries. The spire is 6 feet 8 inches at base, and the stone 6 inches thick.