Church Of St Saviour

Church of St Saviour, Dartmouth

This church was dedicated in 1372 as a chapel of ease under the Church of St Clement at Townstal. Church building had commenced earlier in the 14th century but it was enlarged in the late 14th/early 15th century. The town corporation owned the advowson between 1585 and 1835 and were responsible for the major refurbishment of 1633 to 1637. A vestry was added in 1883. A plaque records the expenditure of over £3400 in 1887 to 1888 by EH Sedding, architect. Further renovation occurred in 1891 to 1893 by Ashworth, with later repairs in 1932 and 1956. The church is built of local stone rubble with Bathstone and Salcombe stone dressings; the various builds show in the different styles of rubble masonry. The roofs are slate with pierced and crested ridge tiles.

Plan and Development

The church comprises a nave and chancel with transepts, north and south aisles extending into the chancel and flanking the west tower, north and south porches, and a vestry on the south side of the chancel. The eastern end of the nave was rebuilt in the late 15th century with a new rood screen in 1496, possibly with the transepts. In 1633 to 1637 the tower was heightened, new windows were installed to the aisles and the gallery was erected as part of major refurbishment. In the late 19th century a major restoration in two phases saw the church reroofed, the chancel stripped of its 17th-century furnishings and "restored", the organ "enlarged", and the vestry built.

Exterior

The tall unbuttressed west tower has its upper stage from the 17th century with embattled parapet and corner pinnacles. The belfry has mullioned round-headed windows under a continuous hoodmould. Older double-lancet belfry windows appear below along with large 19th-century clockfaces. The restored west doorway is a two-centred arch with shafts and carved arch under hoodmould, containing a 19th-century door. Above is a four-light window with ogival tracery. Gabled ends to the aisles, like most other gables, have coping and apex crosses.

The 19th-century gabled north porch has offset buttresses, a two-centred outer arch, boarded wagon-style roof, and 19th-century north doorway which is a moulded two-centred arch and contains a Gothic-style door. The south porch of circa 1630 has an embattled parapet and moulded two-centred outer arch with hoodmould and contains probably original timber panelled gates with crest of twisted iron spikes. A worn stone plaque above formerly displayed the town arms with the date. Inside are stone benches and plain vaulted roof. The south doorway is a 17th-century two-centred arch with ovolo-moulded surround.

The north and south aisles have 17th-century windows with unusual tracery of intersecting curves and large cinquefoil roundels to the gallery. The hoodmoulds on the south side are dated 1932. The gable-ended transepts run parallel to the church; both have four-light west windows with intersecting tracery, outer 19th-century windows with Perpendicular tracery and blocked east windows. The chancel has 19th-century Perpendicular windows and, on the northern side, a thicker wall including a small blocked window. The vestry is in Gothic style with embattled parapet and tall chimneyshaft (rebuilt in the late 20th century) and dated 1888 on rainwater head.

Interior

The interior is one of the best in Devon. An uninterrupted roof covers the nave and chancel with 19th-century boarded vault. Similar roofs cover the aisles and contemporary intersecting beam ceilings cover the transepts. All are painted and feature gold stars in the transepts and chancel. The tower arch is tall and plain. There is no chancel arch.

The five-bay arcades include one bay across the transepts and another overlapping into the chancel. They are not the same. The western two bays are 14th century. The south side has octagonal piers with moulded capitals; the north side is similar but with shafts to the corners. The eastern three bays were rebuilt in the 15th century with taller arches, Pevsner's B-type profiles to the piers, carved capitals and carved fleurons and other motifs to the arches (one has an almost continuous leaf scroll).

The chancel has combined piscina and sedilia consisting of four bays with crocketed ogee tops. Other piscinas appear in the transepts: in the north transept a low cinquefoil head and projecting bowl below a row of three plain niches, and in the south transept a double cusped ogee arch with carved tracery in the spandrels with traces of old painted colour. A Tudor-arch doorway leads from the south chapel to the vestry containing a Gothic-style door. Windows have hollow-chamfered rere arches, except the east window which has a moulded rere arch. The walls are plastered.

The nave and aisles have flagged floors including a large number of 17th and 18th-century ledger stones. A section at the east end has a series of 19th-century brasses with a border of polychrome marble. Black and white chequered marble appears in the sanctuary.

Fittings

The rood screen dates to 1496 according to the church accounts. It is very high quality carved oak in eleven bays across nave and aisles. Stone stairs at each end have round-headed doorways to the rood loft. Perpendicular window tracery appears above wainscotting with blind tracery (the right end bay replaced with panelling dated 1598). The screen has carved Gothic coving and intricately carved and undercut frieze and low crest. Ancient painted colour survives including defaced saints on the wainscotting. There is a 20th-century replacement rood. Later parclose screens bearing the arms and initials of James Pelliton, mayor in 1567 to 1568, have standard tracery with carved frieze to match the rood screen.

The west gallery is dated 1633. The oak carving is in same style as contemporary fronts of merchants' houses. It has a richly carved bressummer. The frontal is divided into bays by standards carved as Ionic columns, with panels (painted with the arms of mayors, recorders and other prominent Dartmouth men) having richly carved rails and muntins under a grille of tiny turned balusters to the handrail. A good early 18th-century stair has open string with carved stair brackets, slender turned balusters with blocks and moulded flat handrail.

The south door, although dated 1631, has excellent probably 15th-century ironwork featuring two lions across a tree with large leaves. The remarkable painted altar table was made in 1893 from a late 16th-century communion table using carvings of the Evangelists as the legs. The wooden communion rail dates from 1956. There are late 19th-century oak stalls with Gothic-style ornament and a Rococo organ case of 1789 by Micheau of Exeter.

The south chapel is lined with 17th-century panelling (a section cut away to reveal a small brass) and some later panelling. A rare 15th-century painted stone pulpit is tall and encrusted with carved decoration. The slender octagonal panelled stem widens above like a palm to an octagonal drum (with timber door) which has broad bands of foliage top, bottom and up the corners, and narrow panels originally undecorated but with symbols of royal authority added along with the initials of Charles II.

The 19th-century timber eagle lectern has carved decoration to stem and base. A brass lectern stands in the south transept chapel. A low screen to the south transept is made up from pieces of 17th-century panelling, and the chapel there includes a panelled stall dated 1630. The south transept has an altar dating from 1902 and contemporary ornate reredos built in same style and colour scheme as the nearby rood screen and includes a ceramic mosaic. The north transept altar and reredos were erected in 1957.

Gothic-style municipal benches of 1815 have been moved from the chancel to the nave. The plain 14th-century stone font has a circular stem and octagonal bowl. 19th-century gas lights have ornate wrought-iron brackets. A brass candelabra in the nave dates from 1708. Towards the west end of the nave, a 19th-century timber arch with Gothic decoration stands under the gallery, probably contemporary with the glazed tower screen and vaulted ceiling to the tower porch.

At the west end of the south aisle are two large painted charity boards recording charitable bequests between 1490 and 1700, the larger one a former reredos surmounted by a wooden model of a bible open at Luke VII, and flanked by Commandment boards. Above it hangs a very large painting, "The Widow's Son" by William Brockedon (1787 to 1854) of Totnes. Also here are an ancient chest and the old municipal fire engine, a Newsham model of 1737. The chancel and nave have hatchments of the Seale family.

Memorials

The chancel floor includes one of the most important brasses in Devon, commemorating John Hawley, shipowner, three-times mayor of Dartmouth and major benefactor of the church, who died in 1408. He is represented in armour flanked by his two wives under an arcade of tall cusped ogee canopies. Nearby is another brass commemorating the death of Gilbert Staplehill in 1637. There are several good ledger stones, but the oldest and most interesting is a fragment of a slate slab near the pulpit engraved with the figure of a priest in eucharistic vestments.

The oldest mural monuments are in the chancel. On the north side, a small monument to Nicholas Hayman (died 1606) has pilasters enriched with ribbonwork and cartouche below carved with emblems of mortality. On the south side, a large marble memorial to Walter Jago (died 1733) has Corinthian pilasters to open pediment, fluted consoles and cartouche, and a smaller one below to Edward Hanbury (died 1767), shaped with urn at the top and arms below.

A good monument in the north transept to Roger Vavasoir (died 1696) and son Henry (died 1727) is signed by Jo. Westone. It has Corinthian pilasters to moulded cornice and open segmental pediment with central flaming urn and allegoric figures on the pediment, tearful putti on the sill, and massive console brackets flanking a heraldic cartouche. A large late 17th-century-style monument in the south transept apparently commemorates the refurbishment of the chapel in 1902 by William Taylor and his wife Elizabeth. Other 19th-century monuments appear in the gallery.

Glass

Much of the glass was blown out by bombs in 1943. Some 19th-century glass survived and subsequent 20th-century glass was installed, notably in the south chapel in 1969 by A Attwood. Only fragments survive of 17th-century heraldic glass in the aisles and include an oval glass plaque recording the payment for window glass by the merchant Thomas Pagge in 1634.

The church forms the focus for the New Quay area of Dartmouth where several houses survive with architectural parallels to the 17th-century carpentry and joinery in the church. Some of the houses were occupied by the merchant families who are commemorated in the church.