Church Of St Andrew

Church of St Andrew

This is a parish church of exceptional architectural interest, combining medieval fabric with outstanding nineteenth-century restoration and furnishings.

The church dates from the 12th and early 13th centuries, with a 12th or early 13th-century font. The chancel is early 14th century, while the aisles, porch, and tower date from the 15th century. The building is constructed of red sandstone with Beer stone dressings, the tower being red sandstone and flint, with slate roofs. The plan comprises a nave, chancel, west tower, five-bay north and south arcades (one bay to the chancel), a south porch, and a north-east vestry. The church is largely Perpendicular in style, though the east window and chancel date from the Decorated period.

The exterior is striking in its materials and decoration. The rough red sandstone is dressed with white Beer stone, and the building is distinguished by its embattled parapets and embattled turrets. The chancel features set-back buttresses and a fine five-light early 14th-century east window with intersecting tracery, hoodmould, and carved label stops. The south side has a three-light Perpendicular window and a blocked priest's door with a four-centred arched head in volcanic stone. The north aisle is embattled and buttressed with five bays, incorporating a polygonal rood loft stair turret with parapet. Three-light Perpendicular windows have much renewed tracery, with some voussoirs in white stone. A small square-headed west window has a chamfered frame. A 19th-century vestry in the north-east corner has a parapet and a two-light mullioned east window, with a hollow-chamfered doorway in the north wall. The south aisle is also embattled with similar windows and buttresses, the voussoirs of some windows alternating red and white stone. The porch, in the westernmost bay, is embattled with set-back buttresses and features a decayed shallow-moulded rounded outer doorway and a moulded inner doorway with a plank and cover strip door. The porch has a Perpendicular ceiled wagon roof with moulded ribs and foliage bosses. The embattled tower has a diagonal buttress and a large polygonal embattled south-west stair turret with slit windows rising above the tower proper. Two-light belfry openings face all four sides, with a bellringers' stage window on the west face with a rounded head. A deeply-moulded 19th-century west doorway sits below a four-light 19th-century Perpendicular west window with a king mullion.

The interior is rich in medieval and 19th-century fittings. Walls are largely unplastered except for the chancel. A 19th-century timber cusped chancel arch frames the chancel space. Five-bay north and south arcades (one bay to the chancel) feature octagonal sandstone piers and double-chamfered rounded arches in a Perpendicular design typical of the region. A narrow double-chamfered tower arch dies into the walls. Beer stone rere arches frame the windows. The chancel retains a medieval unceiled wagon roof, repaired and painted in 1863 by Henry Woodyer, with large painted bosses. The nave roof dates from 1869 by Woodyer and features an arched brace with a longitudinal rib below collar level and main timbers moulded with carved bosses at the intersections. The aisle roofs, almost certainly also by Woodyer, are unusual in their curved longitudinal ribs below curved ties supported on corbels to the arcades.

A fine 13-bay rood screen, restored by Harry Hems between 1887 and 1894, retains well-preserved painted wainscot panels depicting female saints to the south and male saints to the north, along with other ancient painted decoration including chevron patterns on the east side. The rood and figures were added in 1889, said to be the first post-Reformation replacements in Devon. Chamfered doorways lead to the rood loft stair turret, with the upper doorway blocked. Three-bay square-headed traceried parclose screens, restored in 1890, incorporate some linenfold panelling.

The chancel contains notable 19th-century fittings, partly from Woodyer's period in the 1860s and partly from 1890. These include excellent 1860s floor tiling, a co-eval cinquefoil-headed piscina on the south wall, and a moulded priest's door into the vestry on the north wall. Internal angel corbels and carving appear on the south window, where the sill is brought down to form a seat. A splendid five-bay canopied stone and marble reredos of the 1890s, designed by Fulford and Harvey, features marble shafts, fan vaulting, and blind tracery. On either side, three tiers of blind stone tracery are filled with 1890s mosaics of censing angels; the tracery apparently survives from the 1860s. A stone and marble altar is topped with two very large freestanding alabaster angels, originally kneeling on the reredos flanking a white marble crucifixion carved in Italy by P. Bartolini, now removed to the altar of the south chancel chapel. Choir stalls from the 1860s were designed by Woodyer.

The nave contains a 12th-century Purbeck marble font beneath the tower, featuring a square bowl with blind arcading on a rounded stem with corner shafts. An 1875 stone and marble pulpit designed by Easton and Son has open panels and a carved figure of St Andrew. A 19th-century timber eagle lectern, probably copying a 16th-century original, stands nearby. A complete set of nave benches from the early 16th century have square-headed ends with two tiers of tracery; aisle benches copy the medieval style in the 19th century. Fixed to the tower is a remarkable section of medieval painted panelling with two single figures apparently representing early 16th-century portraits. Piscinas appear in the south chancel chapel and nave.

Memorials include a mural tablet on the north wall of the chancel commemorating Dr William Huchenson, Chaplain to James I and Charles I, with armorial bearings and a Latin inscription. A kneeling figure on the south wall of the nave commemorates Richard Waltham, died 1637. On the north wall of the nave is a good classical white marble monument to William Long, died 1770, and one to John Geere, died 1748. Other late 18th and 19th-century white marble wall tablets are also present.

The stained glass includes fragments of 14th and 15th-century glass leaded into a window in the vestry, with other fragments in the east window at the base, concealed internally by the reredos. Late 15th-century and early 16th-century heraldic shields appear in the south window of the south chancel chapel. The south window in the chancel, with a memorial date of 1856, is probably by William Wailes. The remainder of the glass comprises an outstanding and complete scheme by the Hardman Company: the east window dates from 1868; the aisle windows are late 19th-century with white glass canopies; the west windows of the aisles also by Hardman were designed in the 1880s and 1890s; and a memorial window in the south chancel chapel, incorporating a portrait head, is also by the Hardman Company.

The 19th-century restoration programme was carried out over 30 years beginning in 1863, during the incumbency of the Reverend Reginald Porter, a High Churchman. The 1860s restoration was undertaken by Henry Woodyer, with the restoration of the rood screen in the 1880s executed by Hems to designs by architects Fulford and Harvey. As a reflection of High Church design and craftsmanship applied to a fine medieval parish church and remaining relatively unaltered since that period, Kenn is of outstanding historical interest.