Church Of St Peter And St James

Church of St Peter and St James

This is a parish church with a medieval west tower and north nave wall dating to the 14th century or earlier. The remainder of the building was entirely rebuilt between 1870 and 1879, with Samuel Hooper of Hatherleigh serving as architect in 1878. The church is constructed of stone rubble, brought to course on the tower and north wall of the nave, with the remainder in squared stone rubble and freestone dressings. Slate roofs are finished with crested ridge tiles.

The plan comprises a west tower, nave, chancel, north and south transepts, a north-east vestry, and a south porch. The 19th-century rebuilding is executed in the Decorated style. Gables feature chamfered stopped bargeboards with kneelers and exposed purlin ends. The east wall has angle buttresses with coped set-offs.

A chamfered string rises beneath the sill of a 3-light Geometric east window with hoodmould and carved foliage label stops. The south wall of the chancel contains two trefoil-headed single-light windows with chamfered architraves. The north and south transepts have 3-light windows with intersecting tracery, hoodmoulds, and carved foliage label stops; the south transept also has a 1-light east window matching the chancel. The north side of the nave features a central 3-light intersecting traceried window with a hoodmould and reused medieval carved head label stops, flanked by two 2-light 19th-century Decorated uncusped windows with Y tracery. Angle buttresses with coped set-offs occur at the west end of both north and south sides.

The south porch has a steeply-pitched gabled roof and a chamfered stopped doorway below a shield carved with "1870". It is flanked by 2-light Geometric Decorated windows with hoodmoulds and carved foliage label stops. The north-east vestry has an asymmetrical east gable, a chamfered stopped east doorway, and a 2-light square-headed stone mullioned north window.

The unbuttressed, battlemented two-stage west tower has a projecting rectangular north-east stair turret with slit windows, the east wall of which is flush with the tower's east wall. The turret has a sloping slate roof. The tower pinnacles have an unusual convex inner profile and terminate in crocketted finials. The chamfered west door is probably 19th century, set below a 2-light square-headed cusped 19th-century window with hoodmould and label stops. Two-light chamfered belfry openings face all four sides of the tower; the south face has a small cusped single-light window at bellringers' stage.

Interior

The porch contains a narrow chamfered two-centred doorway, slate-topped benches, and the remains of a reused medieval carved wallplate. The church interior has plastered walls. Arched brace roofs of 19th-century date run throughout; the nave roof features a moulded wallplate with braces springing from moulded timber corbels. The double-chamfered crossing arch has an inner order carried on moulded corbels. The chancel arch is double-chamfered, with the inner hollow-chamfered order springing from moulded capitals on short shafts supported on foliage corbels. Transept roof braces spring from moulded corbels above timber shafts carried on moulded stone corbels. The two-bay chancel roof has a brattished vine-carved wallplate. The unmoulded tower arch springs from chamfered imposts.

A timber crested reredos of 5 blind arches features paintings of Christ flanked by saints and angels. A trefoil-headed piscina on the south wall has a hoodmould, carved foliage corbels, and diaper tiling. An aumbry on the north wall has a hoodmould, label stops, and fleur de lis cusping with a billet moulding on the shelf. A moulded timber altar rail has metal barley sugar standards and ornamental pierced spandrels, with contemporary tiling to the chancel and crossing.

Choir stalls in the south transept have fleur de lis poppyheads; others are rectangular with blind traceried carving. The organ case in the north transept is probably contemporary with the restoration. The nave has simple stepped bench ends with moulded rails. A 5-sided drum pulpit in Jacobean style, dated 1910, stands on a stem with moulded base decorated with lively grotesques. The drum comprises standards decorated with strapwork between panels of symbolic carving and foliage under round-headed arches. A plain octagonal granite font, possibly 14th century (Creswell), is fitted with a late 19th-century domed font cover with crocketted brackets pierced with trefoils and a pinnacle. A late 19th-century timber lectern is also present. A chamfered arched blocked doorway to the tower stair turret is visible on the west wall.