Congregational Chapel, Including Front Walls And Iron Railings

Congregational Chapel, Chulmleigh, East Street (north side)

A Congregational chapel founded in 1633, substantially rebuilt in 1710 and subsequently altered. The building stands as an important example of nonconformist religious architecture in Devon.

The structure is built of unrendered stone rubble beneath a hipped slate roof. The chapel is rectangular on plan, with a two-storey school-room wing added at the west end in 1836, projecting forward and creating an overall L-shaped plan. A low single-storey vestry extension stands at the west end. The chapel has galleries at the west end and on the south side.

The exterior features large pointed-arched windows to the north and south sides, with twentieth-century fenestration in nineteenth-century Gothic style. The east end has two windows with renewed lintels. The south side is dominated by a central gabled porch containing a virtually semi-circular arched doorway with a date tablet of 1710 in the gable. Above this is a small pointed-arched window with a tablet below dated 1633, likely a nineteenth-century insertion. Mounted on the front wall are slate headstones: one to a member of the Sharp and Clerk family by Howell (to the right of the porch), and one to Mary Turner (died 1816) and the children of Richard and Mary Howell (signed Howell, to the left). These are all early nineteenth-century work.

The school-room extension has a pedimented front gable end with a Gothic segmental-arched first-floor window of three ogee-leaded lights.

The interior of the chapel features a flat plaster ceiling. An early nineteenth-century west gallery has a panelled front with rounded projecting centre, supported on four turned columns. An early nineteenth-century clock with wooden case and Gothic traceried panel stands on the gallery front. A smaller singing gallery over the south entrance, probably dating from circa 1800, has a rounded panelled front supported on two turned timber columns, with some original seating. A slender staircase to the west has a vase finial to the lower newel. The west staircase giving access to the gallery incorporates late seventeenth or early eighteenth-century turned balusters reused during the circa 1836 remodelling.

The pulpit, believed to have come from the parish church, has an octagonal drum with three heights of bolection-moulded panels and a similarly panelled backboard. It has an octagonal tester with shaped top supported by a wrought-iron pendant and dove finial, probably early eighteenth-century but incorporating some earlier material in the canopy. The chapel seating was replaced in 1882. Two early nineteenth-century brass chandeliers of six and eight branches survive, as does an early eighteenth-century Communion table with four baluster legs.

A square iron tablet on the wall of the lobby at the west end, signed by Howell, reads 'The premises adjoining the west end of this building were erected in 1836'. The inscription notes that the school-room was "for the education of children of any denomination, the other apartments are for the use of either of the minister or school-master for the time being".

The roof retains its original structure, consisting of two king-post trusses with braced principals, the braces to the east truss strongly curved. These carry double purlins and a square-set ridge-piece.

The north wall displays two late nineteenth-century diamond-shaped wooden shield-panels, one inscribed "Arms of John Bowring who gave the ground" and the other "Arms of Lewis Stuckley who built this chapel 1633". The interior walls carry numerous monuments including: on the north wall, an octagonal wooden tablet surmounted by an urn to John Cudmore (died 1706), twelve years pastor succeeding Thomas Hart, and a large oval medallion to Richard Darracott (died 1727), pastor; on the north wall also, monuments to William Skinner (died 1826), Roger Howell (died 1839) and others; on the east wall, a monument to Reverend Thomas Sharp (1858), thirty-two years pastor; and on the south wall, a monument to Reverend Joseph Hooker (died 1748), pastor and descendant of John Hooker, the historian of Exeter.

The chapel was repaired in 1793 and again circa 1803–4, enlarged at the west end in 1836 and at the east end in 1933.