Church Of Holy Cross

The Church of Holy Cross is a parish church located in Newton Ferrers. It features a 15th-century west tower, while the rest of the church contains elements from the 13th and 14th centuries, although it was extensively rebuilt in 1885-1886 according to designs by Fellowes Prynne. The structure is built of stone rubble with freestone dressings and has slate roofs. The church comprises a nave, north and south aisles, a chancel with a vestry, a south porch, and the west tower.

The windows are mostly late 19th-century Perpendicular style with panel tracery, including a three-light east window in early English style. The south window of the chancel dates from the 15th or 16th century and features three cusped lights with a straight head and hood mould. A 13th-century north window of the chancel has tripartite lancets with cusped heads and restored mullions. The large east window of the south aisle, from the early 16th century, has a four-centred arch with four roll-moulded lights.

The west tower is tall and has three stages, with weathered string courses and a moulded plinth. The buttresses are set back from the corners and have set-offs, topped with an embattled parapet and stumps of pinnacles. The tower includes a three-light Perpendicular bell-opening and a 19th-century three-light Perpendicular style west window and west doorway.

Inside, the church features wide 15th-century three-bay north and south arcades with moulded four-centred arches supported by monolithic granite piers that have alternating shafts and hollows, along with moulded caps and bases. There is a 13th or 14th-century piscina with foiled tracery and a triple sedilia on the south wall of the chancel. Squints connect the aisles to the chancel and the nave to the north aisle. A two-centred arch chamfered doorway with pyramid stops leads from the north wall of the chancel to the vestry. The nave and chancel are combined, featuring a 19th-century boarded wagon roof.

The furnishings from the late 19th century include screens, choir stalls, a pulpit, a brass lectern, and an alabaster reredos, with 20th-century seating. Notable monuments include a tablet on the south wall of the chancel from 1679, dedicated to Grace Clifford, daughter of Barnaby Potter, Bishop of Carlisle, framed within a bolection architrave with a cornice and pulvinated frieze.