Christ Church And Churchyard Wall To The North

Christ Church is an 1856 chapel of ease built near the church of St Michael, Brentor, designed by Richard Gosling of Torquay. The chapel was largely financed by Mrs Isabella Holwell, Admiral Octavius Vernon, and Mrs Danby. It is constructed of roughly dressed stone with granite dressings and a slate roof, built in a small Early English style. The building comprises a shallow chancel, nave, west tower, a north-west porch, and a south-east vestry. The two-bay chancel has a moulded, coped gable with granite kneelers and a triple lancet east window below a hoodmould with moulded corbels. Clasping buttresses are present at the east and west ends of the nave, and the north and south sides have buttresses with quoins and set-offs between recessed, single lancet windows with splayed sills. A moulded granite string runs below the windows. The five-sided, south-east vestry has a deep, pyramidal roof. The north-west porch has a moulded, coped gable with kneelers and a moulded arched granite outer door, with a similar inner door. The three-stage, battlemented west tower has a semi-circular south stair turret with small, rectangular, chamfered stair windows. The tower has clasping buttresses with set-offs, two moulded strings at the base, a granite band below the parapet, and octagonal corner pinnacles with finials. The tower has chamfered lancets with hoodmoulds at the bellringers' stage and similar lancets with slate louvres at the belfry stage; a similar lancet is located on the north side at the first stage. A moulded arched west doorway has a hoodmould.

Inside, the chancel and tower arches are moulded granite, without capitals, and the nave has a five-bay moulded arch brace roof with heavily moulded purlins and a wall plate, springing from moulded granite corbels. The chancel roof has a collar rafter. A narrow, chamfered, stopped doorway leads into the vestry. The nave windows have moulded granite inner arches, and the east window has engaged shafts with bell capitals. The church contains a set of contemporary glass by Alfred Beer of Exeter, including pictorial glass in the east window and a window opposite the north door commemorating Isabella Holwell. Another window above the pulpit features text on a scroll, while the other windows incorporate quarries with borders. A granite font, likely dating to 1856, has a bowl decorated with bold trefoils on a stem of clustered shafts. Later fittings, from the 1930s, include a font cover; the plaster was removed from the walls at that time. A contemporary stone rubble wall, also of 1856, surrounds the churchyard to the south and is included for group value. The wall has a granite capping and curves towards the north porch, with granite gate piers having gabled caps. The church’s construction cost £1,003. Its unusual, unarchaeological Gothic style is distinctive within the Diocese of Exeter for the late 1850s.