Church Of St Swithin

Church of St Swithin

This parish church has Anglo-Saxon and Norman origins, rebuilt with a north aisle in the 15th century. It was restored around 1840 and then thoroughly restored again in 1879 by Edward Ashworth, when new roofs, window tracery, furnishings and fittings were installed, and a south aisle was added with a sacristy and porch.

The exterior is built of volcanic rubble walls laid to courses (in 1879) with volcanic ashlar dressings and Beerstone details, beneath slate roofs with crested ridge tiles. The architectural style is Perpendicular, including most of the restoration work. The building comprises a nave and chancel with a north aisle featuring an east chapel, a south aisle with sacristy, a south porch, and a west tower, each section under separate roofs. Most external detail was restored in the 19th century, though the size, disposition and arrangement of 15th-century windows, doorways and buttresses are mostly preserved. All gables have been rebuilt with kneelers, coping and stone crosses at each apex.

The high west tower is of two stages with offset buttresses, an embattled parapet and a projecting 5-sided stair turret to the north with an embattled parapet. The belfry windows are 2-light openings in Beerstone with tracery and louvres, apparently unrestored, though the upper stage may have been heightened. The south aisle of 1879 has a 3-light window on each side of a gabled porch with a moulded archway; the hood-mould label-stops are carved as medieval royal heads. To the east are a small arched door and 2-light window serving the sacristy, with a large end buttress surmounted by a Beerstone chimney. The east window of the south aisle displays unusual Perpendicular-style tracery, while the 19th-century east window to the chancel is of Decorated style; both have hood moulds with label-stops carved as medieval heads. Changes in masonry indicate that the roofs of the chancel and north aisle were raised in the 19th century. The north aisle comprises 5 bays with diagonal buttresses at each end and four Perpendicular windows with 19th-century tracery, plus an unrestored arched door to the left of centre. A south door of 1879 uses volcanic stone and features a Romanesque arch with half-engaged shafts, bases and cushion capitals under double chevron ornament; the plain round arch is surmounted by a contemporary carved head.

Interior

The high 15th-century tower arch has a Beerstone lining of palmed and carved recessed panels with cinquefoil heads. A volcanic stone doorhead serves the tower stair, above which is a carved round arch, possibly reused Anglo-Saxon-Norman work. The belfry floor contains late 13th or early 14th-century moulded beams.

The main body of the church is largely the result of 19th-century modernisation. Four-bay Beerstone arcades run between the nave and chancel and the aisles. The 15th-century north arcade stands on moulded shafts with foliate capitals (Pevsner's Type B), though the foliage was recut around 1840; original carving survives only at the east-end respond. The south arcade is a matching copy of 1879. The nave, chancel and north aisle have fine 19th-century wagon roofs. The break between nave and chancel is marked by an arch-braced truss resting on stone corbels carved as angels with cheaters. The south aisle roof of 1879 features cusped principals and king-posts on crenellated tie-beams with central pendants.

Apart from two 17th-century oak pews, all fittings date from 1879. The sandstone reredos comes from the Hems workshop in Exeter. Minton floor tiles pave the chancel. A dwarf chancel screen of iron grille-work is decorated with quatrefoils and fleur de lys, and a brass lectern of similar style stands nearby. Front pews apparently incorporate 15th-century carved oak panels. The church contains good late Victorian and Edwardian stained glass. Two windows by Heaton, Butler and Bayne appear in the counter windows of the north aisle. In the south aisle, a Dixon and Vesey window of 1881 to the left of the door features St Cecilia and angels alongside musicians, while the window to the right depicts three art nouveau panels showing wheat ears, lilies and grapes.