Church Of St Mary

CHURCH OF ST MARY, APPLEDORE

The Church of St Mary is a 19th-century church overlooking the waterfront in the shipbuilding port of Appledore. It was built between 1836 and 1838 to designs by J. Williams, with major alterations and enlargements carried out in 1897–1898 and 1909.

The building is constructed from coursed grey rubble with cream limestone dressings, possibly Bath stone. The tower is built from darker pinkish sandstone from Cornborough, Abbotsham. The roofs are slate.

The church follows a Perpendicular Gothic revival design of the Commissioners' type, typical of the 1830s. It comprises a five-bay clerestoried nave, north-west porch, lean-to aisles, a shallow sanctuary, and a south-west tower which also functions as a porch. The building is sited in a large sloping graveyard with the east front facing down towards the road and the Torridge estuary.

The gable east front features a three-light window with flanking turrets. The aisles are lower and set back with flat parapets and untraceried lancets to the east. Aisle windows contain simple Y-tracery except in the westernmost bay, which have more elaborate Perpendicular tracery. Shallow buttresses at each bay rise to stumpy pinnacles. The tower, evidently an addition given the non-matching stone, is low Perpendicular in style with a bulky stair-turret at the south-east and angle buttresses. It has two-light windows, some square-headed, and an embattled parapet with small pinnacles. The gabled north-west porch, added in 1909, has a four-centred doorway with naturalistic head-stops. The west end is cut into the rising ground and contains a three-light window and a louvred three-light vent in the west gable. A narrow vestry sits between the nave west wall and the churchyard retaining wall.

Inside, the nave arcades feature octagonal piers with moulded capitals and double-chamfered arches. The west bay is narrower than the others. A good plaster vault of 1838 with moulded quadripartite ribs rises above the nave. At the intersections are large acanthus bosses that functioned as ventilators for gas lighting. The ribs rest on cherub corbels at the clerestory walls. The aisles have flat ceilings with moulded cornices. The east ends of the aisles flank the chancel and contain the organ to the north and a small chapel to the south, which was reordered in 1988.

The principal fixtures include a stone reredos, probably from the mid-19th century, with flanking niches under crocketed gables and a central oak-panelled section of around 1953. An open chancel screen with foiled arched openings and an arcaded gallery top was made in 1912 at a local shipyard from salvaged ship's timbers. The pulpit, dating to around 1866, is of stone with marble shafts and blind trefoiled arches, with a stem carved with ropework. A neo-Perpendicular font, probably late 19th century, has a panelled stem rising via ogee curves to an octagonal bowl. Plain pine benches and wood-block floors date from 1899, with stone-flagged aisles. The east window, possibly from the 1860s, contains much red, pink and turquoise glass. The south chapel contains the Lundy window by James Paterson of Bideford, dated 1958, and a Second World War memorial by Francis Spear dating from around 1946–1953, both of particularly good quality design. Early 20th-century stained glass is mainly found in the aisles.

A medieval chapel dedicated to St Anne stood near the present site. In 1834 the Reverend Thomas Mill of Northam, the mother parish, requested permission to build a new church to seat 600 persons. The foundation stone was laid on Thursday, 23 June 1836, and the church was consecrated on 25 September 1838. A total of £1,804 12 shillings and 2 pence was collected, supplemented by grants and proceeds from the sale of materials from the old chapel.

The interior was reordered in 1899, with seating rearranged to form a central walkway, new choir stalls, floors and decoration, and a small vestry at the west end. The architect was probably C. E. Smyth-Richards of Barnstaple, who provided plans for an Incorporated Church Buildings Society grant application in 1897 and served as ecclesiastical surveyor to the archdeaconry of Barnstaple from the 1890s. The intended enlargement of the west end by one bay and the addition of the tower were carried out in 1909, possibly using plans from 1897–1898. John J. Smith of Bideford provided unexecuted plans for a vestry in 1913.