The Parish Church Of Our Lady

The Parish Church of Our Lady at Upton Pyne

This is a parish church built mainly in the 14th and 15th centuries, with significant restorations and alterations carried out by Ware in 1833 and William White in 1874–5. The building is constructed of local volcanic trap and Thorverton stone.

The church comprises a west tower, a nave of three bays, north and south aisles, a south porch, a chancel, a north chancel vestry, and an organ chamber.

The exterior contains some 13th-century chancel wall masonry. The outstanding feature is the fine west tower of the last quarter of the 14th century, which is notable for its statuary. The tower has pronounced diagonal buttresses with concave weathering and a south-east half-octagonal stair-turret. It contains three key carved figures of high quality: King David in the stair turret, crowned and holding a staff with a lamb at his feet; Christ in Benediction positioned over the west window; and above the diagonal buttresses at the angles of the parapet, the Four Evangelists. All figures are set beneath cusped and finialed niche canopies. These sculptures are stylistically related to the late-14th-century work on the west front of Exeter Cathedral. The tower has a three-light Perpendicular west window with moulded west doorway and large two-light bell openings with transoms. The parapet and pinnacles were replaced in 1874–5.

The south aisle and east windows are of the mid-15th century, featuring three-light Perpendicular design but retaining definite ogival forms. The south chancel wall contains two roughly contemporary two-light Perpendicular windows, though of coarser execution. The north aisle was rebuilt by Ware with two three-light Perpendicular windows archaeologically sound for their period.

Internally, the chancel arch is 13th-century work—low, narrow, and double-chamfered, with the inner order dying into responds. The tower arch is tall with shallow moulding. The south arcade has original moulded bases and Pevsner B-type piers with heavy foliated capitals; the east and west piers are elaborated with panels of shields and fleurons. The north arcade piers were rebuilt by Ware with arches by White, though the medieval capitals were retained.

South windows retain their reveals; those in the chancel are crude and semi-circular with hollow chamfer. A late-medieval ringing chamber roof survives, with 18th-century balusters to the tower-arch gallery.

William White's restoration work was thorough and sensitive. He created an organ chamber connected to both the north aisle and chancel by moulded arches, moved the 1833 east aisle window further east, and retained a medieval sanctuary north window (three-light Perpendicular). White introduced a diagonal spatial movement by inserting a low, narrowly-pointed arch between the easternmost pier of the south arcade and the chancel arch wall, into which the pulpit is fitted. The roofs are his work and are varied and effective. The interior is rendered, with incised patterns suggesting White envisaged a total decorative scheme, though only tiles and furnishings were ultimately executed.

The sanctuary was refitted by R M Fulford in 1887, which includes a good reredos framing an 18th-century Italian painting of the Last Supper.

Monuments include two early-16th-century tomb recesses in the south-east wall of the south aisle, probably representing the Pyne/Larder chantry chapel. One contains the recumbent armed figure of Edmund Larder (died 1521), his feet resting on a dog, his head on a helm, with heraldic arms displayed on an epaulette, all beneath a four-headed segmented arch framed by clumsy pinnacles. The tomb chest is decorated with shields in quadrants. The other recess is similar but coarser in execution. A mural monument to Lucie Stafford (died 1693) in the south aisle, south-east, features a black tablet with Corinthian columns to each side and a white broken pediment containing heraldic arms.

The stained glass includes German fragments dated 1630 in the south aisle south-east window. Other glass was provided by Ward & Hughes (east window of the organ chamber), Hardman to a design by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (north aisle), and Drake (north aisle west).