Church Of St Luke

Church of St Luke

This is a parish church on High Street in Newton Poppleford, formerly a Chapel of Ease. The 15th-century tower was restored around 1920, while the rest of the church was rebuilt in 1875 by R Medley Fulford. The building is constructed from local stone rubble with sandstone and Beerstone quoins and details, with a red tile roof including bands of scallop-shaped tiles.

The medieval west tower is the only surviving element of the original church. The tower is two storeys with no buttresses. It has a chamfered plinth and two soffit-moulded dripcourses, the upper one running below the much-restored embattled parapet. Worn carved gargoyle water spouts project from the corners. A semi-hexagonal stair turret projects from the north side, crowned with a stepped stone roof likely dating to the early 20th-century renovation and topped with a wrought-iron weather vane. The stair turret contains slit windows, one with a trefoil head. The belfry has square-headed two-light windows with cinquefoil heads on each side. The west side includes the tall 15th-century doorway, a two-centred arch with moulded surround containing a 19th-century plank door. Directly above is a restored two-light window with Perpendicular tracery and moulded hood. Putlog holes remain open around the tower, and an early 20th-century iron clockface is mounted on the north side. In the angle between the tower and south aisle sits a small vestry with a shoulder-headed window and an 18th-century grave slab set into its wall.

The 1875 nave and chancel were completely rebuilt under a continuous roof, with a full-length south aisle constructed under a parallel roof of the same height. The entrance was made through the old west tower. In the 20th century, the east end of the aisle was screened off to create a vestry, though a small room of 1875 in the angle of the tower and aisle was probably originally built for this purpose. The gable-ends of the south aisle and chancel have Beerstone coping. All three contain similar two-light windows with Decorated-style tracery, where the tracery is Beerstone and the arch head includes some brick with a relieving arch above of ashlar voussoirs in alternate purple sandstone and cream-coloured Beerstone. The west end of the aisle has a secondary doorway in a two-centred arch with chamfered surround. The south side of the aisle contains two windows comprising twin trefoil-headed lancets. The east end double gable includes two horizontal bands of Beerstone ashlar interrupted by the windows and with lancet ventilators above. The north side of the chancel also includes two bands of Beerstone ashlar and has two twin lancet windows. The north side of the nave breaks forward slightly and from left to right has a triple lancet, then two single lancets and a twin lancet.

Interior

The tower acts as a porch. The two-centred arch on the left (south) is the 15th-century doorway to the stairs, opposite which is a 19th-century copy leading to the vestry. The tall tower arch, also 15th-century, has a Beerstone arch with double-chamfered arch ring. The nave has an open four-bay roof of scissor-braced trusses with plain arch-bracing springing from soffit-moulded corbels. The south aisle has an identical six-bay roof. The chancel arch comprises two more elaborate closely-set trusses with moulded and cusped arch-bracing, the space between boarded to follow the shape of the arch braces. The four-bay arcade between nave and aisle consists of simple circular timber piers with moulded caps supporting the valley between the roofs. A plain square-headed arch separates chancel and aisle, with a square brick pier between this arch and the arcade. Along the north side of the nave, where the wall was thrown out a short distance, there is a three-bay arcade with octagonal timber piers with moulded bases and caps. The walls are plastered except in the chancel, which is whitewashed brick, probably originally naked brick. The floor is plain tile with stone flags to the chancel.

Nearly all furnishings are of pine in simple Gothic style, with exceptions being the 20th-century lectern, the chancel screen, south aisle altar, and a 17th-century font. The chancel screen was made in 1903 for the Church of St John, Swindon, and was erected here in 1960. Built of oak in Gothic style, it has blind tracery and a moulded cornice enriched with four-leaf decoration surmounted by crenellations. Each panel of the wainscotting frames a carved female figure representing motherhood, described on a board on the north wall. The altar in the south aisle is of identical craftsmanship. The font is late 17th-century Beerstone with an octagonal bowl featuring a shallow basin and panelled sides without ornament, set on a similarly panelled square shaft.

Apart from the 15th-century tower and 17th-century font, the church is entirely 19th-century. The richness of the introduced screen and altar appears incongruous with the deliberate simplicity of the 1875 scheme. The church was a Chapel of Ease until the mid-19th century.