Church Of St Mary

A parish church at Botus Fleming, built in the 15th century with a tower added in the later 15th century. The building was substantially restored in the 19th century. It is constructed of Devon limestone rubble with a roughcast tower and granite dressings, roofed in slate with crested ridge tiles.

The church is built to a Perpendicular style plan comprising a nave and chancel in one, a north aisle, a south porch, and a west tower of the later 15th century.

The nave and chancel together measure four bays in length, with the porch occupying the western bay. A projection on the south wall contains the rood stair, and a plain buttress stands at the east end. The nave contains one 15th-century window of granite with three lights, cusped lights, tracery and a hollow-moulded surround. The chancel has two 19th-century windows of two lights with 4-centred arches and quatrefoils; the original east window was converted from a door. The chancel's east end retains its 15th-century granite window of three lights with cusped lights, upper tracery, a 4-centred arch and hood mould. The south porch features an outer doorway with rounded head and roll and hollow mouldings, with a slate sundial bearing a gnomon set over it, erected by the churchwardens in 1787. The porch interior contains a floor of two 18th-century slate ledger stones to the Pemberton family, dated 1773 and 1789. The inner doorway has a 4-centred arch with similar mouldings and a 19th-century door with strap hinges. The north aisle has a 15th-century granite east window of three lights with cusped lights, tracery and 4-centred arch, and three further similar windows on the north side with the central light taller, plus a matching west window. A slate tablet to Henry Leigh, dated 1791, is fixed to the wall.

The west tower rises in three stages with diagonal weathered buttresses, a moulded plinth, string courses and a tall embattled parapet with pinnacles and a weathervane to the northwest. The west doorway has a 4-centred arch with roll and hollow mouldings, recessed spandrels with quatrefoils and square hood mould, with a 19th-century door bearing strap hinges. A 3-light west window displays cusped lights with the central light taller, Perpendicular tracery and a hood mould continued as a string course. Single chamfered lights occur at the second stage to west and east. The third stage contains three 3-light bell-openings with cusped lights, Perpendicular tracery and louvres, with lancets to the north for the stair. A slate tablet to Grace Keen, dated 1783, is positioned on the south side.

The interior was re-roofed in the late 19th century with arched brace roofs that re-use earlier bosses, probably from the 15th century. Slate flooring survives partially, with some 19th-century tiles. Walls are plastered. The tower arch is 4-centred with Pevsner A-type piers and capitals with moulded abaci. The tower contains a segmental-arched north doorway serving the stair. A five-bay arcade separates the nave from the aisle, with octagonal piers set on moulded bases and capitals bearing fleuron friezes on the abaci. Two piers display image brackets, and a third contains an image stand with moulded hood. The nave has a segmental-arched, chamfered doorway to the rood stair, now blocked. The chancel contains a 19th-century cusped piscina and aumbry. The north aisle has a small pointed-arched piscina.

The font in the nave is probably 14th-century in the Purbeck table-top type, featuring a square bowl with flat blank niches with pointed heads on each side. The nave contains 19th-century wooden pews and a pulpit. Stocks of probable 16th or 17th-century date are housed in the porch. Monuments include a stone effigy of a knight in a recess in the north aisle wall, possibly from the late 14th or early 15th century and probably one of the Moditons family, depicted with crossed legs and carrying a shield. The north aisle also contains an oval marble tablet on slate ground with pediment by Isbell of Stonehouse to William Symon, 1766; a marble tablet to William Symons, 1832; and a marble tablet with eared architrave and festoons of fruit to the sides and pediment to Mark Batt, 1753. The chancel holds a marble tablet on slate ground to William Spry, 1842, and a stone tablet with egg and dart moulded architrave, apron with crossed palms and draped flaming urn to top, by Jno. Rd. Veale of Plymouth, to Elizabeth Bray, 1747. Windows are lattice glazed with late 19th or early 20th-century stained glass in the chancel windows.