Church Of St Nectan

Church of St Nectan, Hartland, Stoke

A parish church of exceptional quality in North Devon. A collegiate church was founded here by Gytha around 1050 and dedicated to St Nectan. The main fabric dates from the 14th and 15th centuries. The building was restored circa 1850 and again in 1910-11.

The church is built of coursed rubble with stone coping to gables and gable-ended slate roofs. The plan comprises a nave, chancel, north and south aisles, transept chapels, porches, and a west tower. The predominant style is Perpendicular, though the tracery of the windows has largely been replaced. The nave, chancel, and tower are likely 14th-century work. The aisles and north and south porches are harder to date with certainty but were probably built between the second half of the 14th century and the later 15th century. The circa 1850 restoration replaced window tracery and installed parclose screens. In 1910-11, Mr Herbert Read undertook a careful restoration of the decayed and missing portions of the roof in St Mary's Chapel to the north, faithfully copying the designs and colours of the original work while retaining all that was sound.

The imposing four-stage tower rises 128 feet high and is reputedly the tallest in Devon. It features set-back buttresses with gargoyles at the top, an embattled parapet, and large corner pinnacles. The belfry openings are two-light transomed windows in Decorated style. On the east face of the tower, within a canopied niche, stands a figure of St Nectan, probably medieval, though the head has been replaced with that of a bishop. The original moulded west doorway has an almost semi-circular head terminating in carved angels, each holding a shield and clothed in the habit of a monk with hood. The restored window above features probably 20th-century tracery in Decorated style of Doulting stone. Both north and south aisles are embattled; their windows were restored circa 1850 with Perpendicular tracery, except the east window of the south aisle, which is Decorated in style. The chancel has a 18th-century lead rainwater head on its south wall.

The large north porch is Perpendicular with a gabled two-storey design. Its simple outer doorway has a pointed arch, and the inner doorway features a double hollow moulded four-centred arch. In the east wall on the first floor survives an original two-light window with a square head and jambs grooved for shutters; the central moulded mullion has been re-used. The south porch carries a datestone of 1786 commemorating the rebuilding of its front wall, which has a simple flattened arch and a sundial dated 1804 above. The large south doorway is 14th-century with a two-centred head and a double row of mouldings between which are small carved fleurons. Both porches retain their medieval wagon roofs and stone benches. Their doors are early and constructed of oak but are encased with deal.

The interior walls are plastered, much of it ancient with signs of old colour, though now surface emulsion-painted. The six-bay north and south aisles feature four-centred chamfered arches on slender piers of four clustered shafts with low moulded cup capitals. A tall tower arch of three orders with four-centred head and projecting imposts rises into the nave. Plain plastered four-centred arches open to the transept chapels. A 14th-century trefoiled piscina survives in the chancel. Medieval wagon roofs extend throughout the church, restored to varying degrees. The nave roof has ornamental bosses, moulded ribs, carved wall-plate, and painted decoration; the east half is ceiled with decorated panels renewed in the 20th century. The north and south aisle roofs have moulded ribs, carved wall-plates, and bosses. The western portion of the north aisle roof was destroyed by fire and reconstructed with new bosses symbolizing the Christian's progress through life. The roof of the north (Lady) chapel is particularly ornate, with most of the bosses original and different designs of decoration in each panel.

A very fine 15th-century rood screen extends the full width of the church, eleven bays long, with Pevsner A-type tracery and rich foliage carving to the coving, showing evidence of ancient colouring throughout. Parclose screens are 19th-century. High-quality benches with carved ends in the south chapel were originally installed in the Lady Chapel around 1540 by Hugh Prust of Thorny, according to documentary evidence. Other pews are largely 17th-century with some 19th-century restoration; those in the south transept are entirely 19th-century. A restored medieval pulpit stands on a renewed stone base. In the chamber over the north porch are preserved panels of a Jacobean pulpit, a list of the allotments of seats in 1613, pieces of medieval tiles and glass, and the parish stocks.

A very fine late Norman font has a square base and bowl ornamented with intersecting arcading, and a stem with cable mouldings separated by incised zigzags, with carved heads at the corners. All the glass is 19th or early 20th-century, the east window designed by Christopher Webb, except for one in the Lady Chapel which contains three roundels, the central one depicting the Virgin Mary and dating to the 14th century. The bells were cast in 1826. Inside the base of the tower are two early 19th-century benefaction boards. An ornate late 14th-century elaborately carved altar tomb of Catacleuse stone, removed from Hartland Abbey in 1848, is sited in the chancel. It served as an altar and communion table until 1931. Throughout the church are 60 mural monuments on walls and floors, of which a few are of considerable interest.

In the chancel floor is an incised metalwork cross and border with a finely incised inscription, now illegible, and a heraldic shield at the centre. On the north aisle wall are two particularly notable wall memorials. One has a segmental pediment over a slate plaque surmounted by a heraldic shield with cherubs at either side and two Corinthian columns below, erected in memory of John Velly, died 1694. The other has a damaged pediment with a relief of a grieving mother and child, a slate plaque with richly decorated surround and foliated volutes either side, dated 1723. Both memorials retain ancient colouring. In the south aisle stands a smaller wooden memorial with Ionic columns either side of a plaque surmounted by a heraldic shield and retaining its original colours.

This is one of the finest churches in North Devon, its interior little altered by restoration and retaining much of its early fabric and features.