Church Of St Andrew

Church of St. Andrew

An Anglican parish church of fifteenth-century date, substantially altered in subsequent periods. The building stands in granite ashlar with coursed slatestone rubble to the north walls, topped with a late nineteenth-century gabled and stone-coped slate roof featuring fifteenth-century head carvings to the kneelers of the chancel and south aisle.

The plan comprises a chancel with north vestry, a nave with north transept, a continuous south aisle with south porch, and a west tower. The south aisle was rebuilt in the seventeenth century; restoration occurred in 1883.

The chancel displays a hoodmould with head stops over a three-light Perpendicular east window with cinquefoiled heads and panel tracery. A late fifteenth-century two-light square-headed window appears to the south. The north vestry contains a fifteenth-century iron grille set in a square window with chamfered head and jamb, above a label mould over a fifteenth-century two-light square-headed window with cinquefoiled heads. A label mould crowns a fifteenth-century three-light cinquefoil-headed window in the north chancel.

The south aisle features hood moulds with square stops over Perpendicular-style three-light windows with panel tracery in the east and west gables. The four-bay south wall displays label moulds over seventeenth-century three-light mullioned windows. A seventeenth-century panelled and studded door with chamfered wood architrave bears similar crosses carved in the spandrels.

The south porch has a hood mould over a fifteenth-century basket-arched moulded doorway. A similar architrave surrounds a mid-nineteenth-century panelled door with a fifteenth-century traceried head. The door retains a fifteenth-century sanctuary knocker, a seventeenth-century clasping ring on a heart-shaped back plate with heart-shaped lock surround, and a fifteenth-century barrel lock and framing to the rear left.

The north transept contains a blocked window to the east and a hood mould over a fifteenth-century three-light Perpendicular window with panel tracery. The north window had its mullions and jambs replaced in 1862.

The north wall of the nave displays two fifteenth-century three-light square-headed windows with cinquefoiled heads and nineteenth-century sills.

The fine three-stage tower features offset and full-height setback corner buttresses and string courses. A hood mould crowns a three-light Perpendicular window with panel tracery above a hood mould over a moulded basket-arched doorway. Slit lights serve the north-east stair turret. Hood moulds surmount cinquefoiled second-stage lights with stone louvres. The belfry stage has hood moulds over two-light Y-tracery windows with trefoiled heads. Crouching gargoyles occupy the corners of the crenellated parapet, which displays crocketed finials to the pinnacles.

Interior

Plaster was scraped from the walls in 1883. The reredos, dating to approximately 1805, bears painted panels of Saints Peter and Andrew and incorporates much reused sixteenth- and seventeenth-century carved panelling, said to have been brought from Parkham Church. Late fifteenth-century waggon roofs cover the nave and chancel, featuring moulded ribs and foliate-carved bosses.

The five-bay fifteenth-century nave arcade comprises depressed arches set on monolithic granite quatrefoil piers with stepped cornices. The north transept features a late eighteenth-century crocketed hood mould with head stops above the north window and a fifteenth-century square relief showing a mermaid.

Fittings include a Gothic-style altar rail dating to approximately 1790. Choir stalls and a reading desk were installed in 1904–5; an eagle lectern was installed in 1903. Rare sixteenth-century benches survive, featuring carved tracery, with one dated 1580; two bench fronts are carved with late sixteenth-century arabesques. The local wood-carver Reuben Arnold created the lectern, tower screen, choir stalls, and pews carved with Old and New Testament scenes between 1906 and 1927. A nineteenth-century bier stands in the north transept.

The font has a fifteenth-century octagonal top set on a thirteenth-century stem. The south aisle contains two rows of late eighteenth-century box pews adjacent to the pulpit, made in 1792 from reused sixteenth-century carved bench ends. Slim Perpendicular-style columns support the sounding board, which features carved sides and crocketed pinnacles. A King's Arms was placed on the west wall of the south aisle in 1814.

A nineteenth-century Pine-Coffin family pew at the east end of the south aisle is constructed from Jacobean balusters, cartouche panels, caryatids, strapwork tops, and other wood carvings brought from Portledge Hall.

Monuments

The chancel contains a lozenge-shaped tablet to George Blake, died 1763, nineteenth-century marble tablets, and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century brasses to the Pine-Coffin family of Portledge House.

The north transept holds an obelisk-shaped monument to Charlotte Morrison, died 1791, her daughter and husband. A monument to Reverend Thomas Hooper Morrison, died 1824, features a rectangular axial tablet with palm fronds and heraldic shield flanked by scrolled brackets with carved festoons. Plain tablets commemorate Eleanor Morrison, died 1841, and Dora Hammett, died 1885.

The south aisle contains a memorial to John Meddon, died 1775, with a draped urn and inscription panels on an oval mount. A monument to Richard Coffin, died 1617, and his wife, died 1651, was erected by their sole surviving son, James, in 1651. It features a heraldic achievement set in a broken segmental pediment above two coloured demi-figures in relief holding hands, above fifteen children and a slate inscription. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ledger stones and Barnstaple tiles pave the aisle floors.

Stained Glass

The east window is dated 1863; the north transept window, 1861; the north chancel window, 1868; and a fine Resurrection window appears in the west, dated 1871. The south aisle retains fragments of sixteenth-century armorial glass in the heads of the east window and old leaded cames with diamond-shaped leaded lights to the central windows.