Church of the Immaculate Conception

The Church of the Immaculate Conception is a Roman Catholic church, dating from 1844 and opened in 1855. It was likely designed by Gideon Boyce of Tiverton and completed by R.D. Gould of Barnstaple, and funded by Sir Bourchier Palk Wrey of Tawstock Court. The church was originally part of a complex that included a priest’s house, which has since been demolished. Built in the Romanesque style, it is constructed from random rubble with ashlar dressings, topped with a slate roof, coped gables, and cast-iron rainwater goods. The church comprises a three-bay nave and an apsidal chancel.

Externally, the round-headed windows have moulded architraves and cushion capitals to the shafts, with a moulded string at cill level. The bays are defined by recessed panels with pilaster buttresses and a corbelled dentil cornice. The apse has a similar surface treatment, featuring carved symbols in the cornice and a single, now blocked, window to each facet. The nave windows are arranged as a triplet in each bay. The west end features a coped gable with a toothed string along the verges. It incorporates a wheel window, two tall, blind statue niches with engaged shafts and cushion capitals, and a gabled porch with a segmental-headed doorway featuring decayed tooth moulding and a two-leaf door with diagonal boards and ornamental strap hinges.

Inside, the church has a simple arched-brace roof springing from scalloped corbels. The semicircular chancel arch springs from carved shafts, with three orders of moulding. The chancel itself features a plaster-vaulted ceiling springing from attached shafts, and coloured floor tiles. A simple Romanesque font, with a circular stem and scalloped shaft, is also present. A late 19th-century Romanesque circular pulpit has semicircular niches with symbols of the Evangelists on the drum, standing on a polychromatic marble stem. A timber west gallery is supported by timber posts with Romanesque capitals.