Charmouth Parish Church (St Andrew)

The parish church of St Andrew, Charmouth, was entirely rebuilt between 1836 and 1838 by Charles Fowler in a Gothic Revival style. It comprises a west tower, nave, north and south aisles, a north porch, a matching south vestry, and a slightly projecting chancel. The church is built with chert rubble walls, featuring "long-and-short style" stone dressings, and a forest marble plinth. Window dressings are of Beer stone, and the roofs are covered in Boscastle slate, with the nave ridge tiled.

The three-stage west tower has diagonal buttresses with set-offs, topped with gablets. It features a circular moulded stone surround to the clock face on each face, and long coupled-lancet bell openings with straight-chamfered jambs and 'V'-grooves. The tower’s cornice is 'Classical' in style with modillions, and it is surmounted by a 'Gothic' embattled parapet. The north elevation has five bays divided by buttresses, featuring tall lancet windows with returned labels. A modillion cornice and plain parapet run along the top. The north porch has a pointed arch entrance with a label, stone gable coping that is corbelled out, and a stone cross at its apex. Inside the porch is a two-leaf door with thin muntins.

The chancel slightly projects, and includes diagonal buttresses with gablet heads and a triple lancet window to the east. The clearstorey windows are pointed. The interior features a five-bay nave and chancel with tall octagonal columns, moulded capitals, and 4-centred arches. The roof is designed in a pseudo-hammer-beam style and includes arch-braces and iron tie-rods between the ends of the hammer-beams. Single clearstorey lancets illuminate the nave. A gallery extends across the west end of the church, supported by two iron columns and a wood-panelled front. The aisle roofs are pentice style with exposed rafters.

Among the fittings is an 1885 pulpit, in a 14th-century Italianate style, constructed of stone and marble, and featuring octagonal columns with trefoil-headed arches and foliage capitals. A 1884 font, also marble and octagonal, is decorated with sunk quatrefoils. A stone altar retable, in a simplified 14th-century style, features crocketed finials and a carved gable stone, dating from before 1503, illustrating a cross with an abbot of Forde wearing a chasuble, alb, and pastoral staff. Memorial tablets are located on the north wall of the chancel, commemorating Anthony Ellesdon, Knight, who died in 1737, with a Classical column surround, and Edward and Martha Bragge, who died in 1747 and 1769, with a rococoesque cartouche. A neo-Classical urn tablet in the north aisle commemorates Julia, wife of Robert Spiller, who died in 1811. Stained glass windows in a 13th/14th-century style were installed in the 1860s and 1870s, with a Christ in Majesty window added to the east in 1936. The organ, dating from 1846 and given by John Bullen, remains in situ. A plain stone font features a small bowl with an octagonal necking and a 20th-century stem.