Church Of St John The Baptist

Church of St John the Baptist, Instow

This is a parish church on Rectory Lane, Instow. The building preserves late 13th and early 14th-century fabric in the chancel, with later Perpendicular additions including the nave, west tower, south transept, and north aisle. The north aisle was added in 1547. The church was restored in 1872–73 by William White.

The exterior is built in stone rubble with ashlar dressings, with slate roofs coped with gable ends. The west tower rises three stages with short diagonal buttresses and an embattled parapet, topped by a tall rectangular stair turret on the south-east side. The tower has single-light bell-openings with louvres—cusped-headed on the top stage and ogee-headed on the second stage to north and south sides—with a straight-headed single-light window to the base. The west side of the tower has a Perpendicular four-light window with human head corbels supporting a pointed arched hoodmould above a Perpendicular doorway with hollow-with-cyma recta moulded surround.

The nave's south side contains two straight-headed windows flanking the south porch. The left window has two cusped-headed lights; the right has three rounded-arched lights, both with hoodmoulds. The 19th-century pointed arched doorway in the porch is fitted with a door of two boarded leaves, the upper part glazed with stained glass leaded lights, and leads through a plain chamfered pointed arched inner doorway. The porch has an unceiled waggon roof without mouldings.

The south transept has a three-light window with trefoil-headed stepped lights and a pointed arched hoodmould, and a two-light window on the east side with quatrefoil tracery to the head of two ogee-headed lights.

The chancel's south side shows two windows: to the left, a cusped-headed two-light window with Y tracery bars, and to the right, a tall single-light lancet (renewed in the 19th century), flanking a cusped-headed priests' doorway. The east end of the chancel and north aisle have two 19th-century straight-headed windows. The north side of the north aisle has four straight-headed early 16th-century Perpendicular windows with gently ogee-headed lights. A slightly projecting rood loft stair turret with a segmental arched doorway projects from this wall, with two buttresses towards the west end. A three-light 19th-century window occupies the west end of the north aisle.

Interior

The interior features a continuous north arcade of four bays with Pevsner 'A' type piers. The chancel pier and respond bear foliated capitals. The capitals to the nave piers commemorate the erection of the north aisle by "Rycharde Waterman (and) Emma His Wyf" in 1547. The north aisle has a ceiled waggon roof with carved bosses at each intersection of the moulded ribs and longitudinal members, and carved timber wall plates. The south transept has a similar roof with a single moulded rib and crenellated timber wall plates with carved decoration. The chancel roof and some reused timbers in the arch-braced nave roof date to the 19th century. An unmoulded semi-circular-headed tower arch supports the tower. The chancel contains 19th-century sedilia and piscina.

The chancel floor retains patterns of Barnstaple tiles. 19th-century chancel and 20th-century nave furniture includes a timber screen dating to 1906–11 across the nave and north aisle. The Norman font has a block-capital shape on a round stem with a lead-lined bowl. A section of probably reused 17th-century communion rail with turned balusters and moulded handrail sits at the west end of the tower gallery.

Monuments and Monuments

Two 17th-century wall monuments to the Downe family occupy the south transept. On the east wall is a square tablet with Ionic colonettes and a skull in the base. On the west wall stands a monument with a swan-necked pediment above a central shield and a medallion featuring a bust of a male figure in bold relief, leaning on a skull and clasping a book, with a verse plaque below.

The north wall of the north aisle bears a monument by J Kendall of Exeter to Humphrey Sibthorp, a botanist who died in 1797. At the east end of the north aisle is a tablet with a moulded stone surround to Rebecca Prince (died 1685), with an oval tablet above to Frederick Holmes (died 1822).

Stained glass windows include examples in the north aisle and chancel east windows, a lancet in the chancel to H Hinchcliff (died 1906), the chancel east window by Myer and Co. to James Edward Allen (1886), and on the south side of the south transept to Richard White and his wife (died 1884 and 1906). The south side of the nave contains windows to Thomas Lock (died 1860) and Captain Leonard Slater (died 1914).