Church of St David

The Church of St David was built between 1897 and 1899 to designs by W.D. Caröe, and represents one of the finest achievements of late Victorian Gothic Revival architecture in England.

Materials and Construction

The church is built of squared, coursed, roughly tooled grey Devon limestone with Bath and Portland stone dressings. The roofs are slate, with shingled and lead-capped spirelets on the west turrets. The rainwater goods are particularly fine leadwork – Caröe was especially interested in this material and was ten times master of the Plumbers' Company.

Plan

The church comprises a nave, chancel, north and south passage aisles, west narthex, north-east tower, north and south transepts, north chapel, and south-east vestry. Passages run north and south of the chancel, with an organ chamber extending over the southern passage and also housing a vestry. There is a crypt at the east end.

Exterior

This large, highly distinctive building employs a freely-treated Gothic style based upon late medieval architecture. It is most commonly viewed from the main road between central Exeter and St David's station, from which the boldly massed tower, chancel, north chapel, and north aisle and transept are seen to dramatic effect.

The tower and chancel display particularly complex geometry with deep recesses. The tower rises in three stages. While the lower two storeys are relatively plain, the belfry is a tour de force. Deep diagonal buttresses emphasise the deeply set pairs of two-light louvred belfry openings with Perpendicular tracery. A buttress rises between the pairs of windows. On the south-west face, a demi-octagonal stair turret rises above the plain parapet, terminating in a timber capping with a thin spike on top.

The chancel features many angular forms: a parapet with broad merlons and embrasures, flat pilaster buttresses, and stepping of the bottom of the parapet around the seven-light east window. This east window is deeply set with a pair of detached buttresses placed in front of the principal mullions, creating a 2-3-2 rhythm to the lights, which have Perpendicular-derived tracery.

The west end of the church takes complex, three-dimensional geometry to new levels. A narthex extends across the west front with north, south and two west doorways. From its north and south corners rise small towers, each capped by a shingled spirelet with lead capping. Between the two towers, a pair of flying buttresses rise from the narthex wall to meet the west wall of the nave. The west window, like the chancel's, is deeply set and arranged in a 1-2-2-1 configuration, with each element separated by thick mullions and the side components divided off by the upper parts of the flying buttresses. Three segmental arches are thrown between the towers and the buttresses and between the buttresses themselves.

The side elevations have four bays to the aisles, divided by flat pilasters. Visual interest is achieved by recessing the high-set windows under segmental arches which span the bays from pilaster to pilaster. The aisles have parapets with hints of merlons over the pilasters. Behind these, masonry gables project up through the aisle roofs, forming the external expression of the internal transverse arches across the passage aisles.

The north and south windows of the transepts feature, like the main east and west windows, thickened main mullions with detached buttresses in a 2-2-2 configuration. The north transept has a deeply recessed entrance with round corners and a segmental arch over it. A similar but larger entrance is formed on the south-east side to the vestries.

Interior

The walls are bare stone. From the west end, the church presents a wide nave of five bays (four aisle bays plus one transept bay) and narrow passage aisles. The arcade arches die into the piers. Stone ribs are thrown across the nave between the piers, with boarded ceilings of the same section between these transverse arches. Large angel busts appear just above the wall-plate. The piers are of unusual section, being roughly half-lozenges with a large roll to the nave.

The aisles have low arches across them with a rectangular opening above each. Stone arches span the aisle bays from east to west. The lower parts of the aisle walls have segmental arches spanning each bay, beneath which are further recesses that originally housed radiators.

The chancel arch is narrower than the nave, with low arches on either side leading to narrow passages. The jambs of the chancel arch contain two large figures of Abraham and Melchizedek under elaborate canopies. Transverse stone arches are also thrown across the chancel.

The east parts of the church are of great visual complexity, presenting constantly changing vistas to the observer. The tower, massive externally, has little internal prominence, sitting over the west part of the north chapel with its supporting walls relatively unobtrusive and scarcely suggesting their true function. The altar in the chapel is placed beyond a stone arch. The chancel has a series of arches to the passages on either side; on the north-west there are two tiers of arches, the upper ones giving into the tower space.

The floor increases in complexity towards the east end. The nave and aisles have plain red tiles in the alleys. The chancel has marble flooring of two colours, while the sanctuary has a Cosmati-style pavement of great richness, laid by Lee Brothers of Bristol.

Principal Fixtures

Many of the fixtures are of great richness. The reredos is of wood, designed by Caröe in the manner of a large continental type. It shows Christ flanked by Apostles and was given by Sarah Thornton West. The stalls are of considerable richness, combining Gothic with strong hints of 16th-century Renaissance work. The figure carving on the reredos and stalls is by Nathaniel Hitch.

The triple sedilia have lavish canopies with complex Gothic detailing featuring crockets and pinnacles. At the entrance to the chancel, standing on the low stone screen which is returned at the chancel steps, are marble figures of Gabriel (north) and Mary (south). The pulpit (north) and lectern (south) are integral with the chancel screen and have ornate Gothic detailing. The pulpit has a wooden tester with touches of early 17th-century decoration.

The font, not provided until 1906, has finely textured decoration similar in character to that on the pulpit. It is square and stands on legs which frame the remains of a medieval font beneath the bowl. The counterweighted font cover is later and commemorates Valpy French (died 1914), vicar at the time of the rebuilding, whose energy and vision inspired the whole project. He is represented in medieval fashion holding a model of the church in his hands.

The nave benches are of considerable interest, combining, like the stalls, both Gothic and post-medieval detail. There is an extensive scheme of stained glass by the well-known maker C.E. Kempe dating from 1900 onwards.

History

A chapelry dependent on Heavitree existed here in the late 12th century. Rebuilding took place in 1541. The immediate predecessor of the present building was an ambitious Greek Doric church of 1816-17 by James Green (1781-1819), a Quaker from Birmingham who was primarily a civil engineer. He was County Surveyor for Devon from 1808 and was responsible for roads, bridges and canal work. Some earlier tombs survive in the churchyard from the pre-Victorian period.

The church we see today is a rebuilding of 1897-1900 to designs by W.D. Caröe, and is his best-known building and probably his greatest work. He won the commission in 1896 in a limited competition assessed by the noted Victorian church architect James Brooks (1825-1901). Although it employs various motifs from late medieval architecture, the overall character of the church is emphatically that of the late Gothic Revival. By the close of the 19th century, architects no longer looked back to copy the work of the Middle Ages. They felt free to take the spirit of medieval architecture and adapt it to the needs of their own time. Occasionally, as here in the seating, architects were willing to include post-medieval features to introduce variety and a sense of continuity with the past.

Caröe's biographer, Jennifer Freeman, describes St David's as "one of the most completely realised of all his churches, impressive in scale, and the first major church in which he could develop fully his personal vision of Gothic mingled with Arts and Crafts ideas." She adds that he was fond of the building and worked on it over many years, even paying for some of the later repair work. The contractor was William Dart of Crediton. The foundation stone was laid on 27 July 1897 by Mrs Thornton West and the consecration by the Bishop of Exeter took place on 9 January 1900.

The architect, William Douglas Caröe (1857-1938), was a leading church architect at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He was articled to Edmund Kirby of Liverpool in 1879-80 but transferred his articles in 1881 to the great Gothic revivalist J.L. Pearson, until 1883. He travelled extensively on the Continent in 1877-82 before setting up in practice in London in 1883, after which he developed a prolific church-building and restoration practice. He became architect to the deans and chapters of Southwell, Hereford, Brecon and Exeter, as well as architect to the Charity Commission and to the Ecclesiastical Commission from 1895.