Church Of St Mary The Virgin

Church of St Mary the Virgin, Lynton

An Anglican parish church with a 13th-century tower, substantially rebuilt between 1891 and 1905 by the architects Sedding and Wilson. The church retains remains of an earlier 1741 rebuilding in the south aisle. The structure is built of rubble with ashlar dressings, including Ham stone, beneath slate roofs.

The plan comprises a 5-bay nave extended westward, with wide north and south aisles, a chancel with a chapel to the north and organ chamber to the south, a vestry, south porch, north porch, and a southwest tower. The late 19th-century rebuilding is broadly medieval in form, but features considerable Art Nouveau detailing, sometimes combined with neo-Norman elements.

The west front presents the north aisle gable set back from a lower north porch, with the nave brought forward to a wide gable above a large 7-light Perpendicular window with moulded drip in snecked rubble. To the right stands a 2-stage plain rubble square tower with crenellated parapet and mid string. The tower has a 19th-century west door in a 14th-century moulded arch with drip to worn head stops, beneath a 2-light 19th-century Perpendicular window. Above the string is another 2-light window, with a clock face that raises the parapet string over its head. The south front of the tower features a small blocked light above the mid string and another clock face to the west. The east side has a small light to the ringing chamber, and the north front has a 2-light opening at parapet level.

Immediately attached to the tower in the same plane is the rendered south aisle wall, with a 2-light window in Ham stone and a projecting gabled porch. The porch has a wide, flat 4-centred arch with chamfer and broad wave mould, stopped at half-height of the jambs to a single broad chamfer. A sundial with incised sun motif adorns the porch. A pair of plank doors is faced with gates featuring scrolled top-rails and mullioned open panels above double panels; similar gates appear in the churchyard wall. An image corbel sits above the doorway. To the right are four 2-light windows and a flush square panel inscribed "The walls of this church were rebuilt in ye year of 1741: John Knight, Richard Vellacott, Church Wardens". At the far right is a projecting gabled vestry in slate-stone with a plank door to a shaped head facing west. The vestry's south wall contains a small lancet and a 2-light plate tracery window with quatrefoil.

The 3-gabled east end displays unusual detail combining neo-Norman with Art Nouveau, principally in Ham stone. The first gable has 1- above 2- above 3-light windows with billet and chevron enrichment. The central gable features a complex series of 1- above 1:2:1- above 2:3:2-light neo-Norman arched windows with raised inscriptions to the arches and to the lowest cill: "O Ye Servants of The Lord, Praise Him and magnify Him for ever". Above is an incised cross in the upper gable and a terminal stone cross. The right-hand gable has a triple stepped lancet with single or paired shafts with annulets. Two Art Nouveau rainwater hoppers appear at this end. The north side has 8 buttresses to 2 offsets and plinth. The first bay contains 2 lancets, the next a single lancet to block stops and a door. Bays 3 to 7 have 4-light windows with cusps to square or circular stops. The lower gabled porch has a diagonal buttress to the right, a pointed doorway with casement and wave mould, and a drip course to heavy unworked square stops, beneath a crenellated parapet with blank panels and a terminal cross. A central Madonna with defaced face sits on a bracket. The east side of the porch has a stone bench within and an arched recess. The inner pair of doors has a wave mould arch and framed plank doors. On the east wall is a foundation stone laid by the Archdeacon of Barnstaple in 1891.

The interior features barrel roofs with a celure over the chancel. Arcades of Ham stone on octagonal piers with moulded caps and double-chamfer flush arches divide the spaces. Plaster walls are painted, with stone floors to processional ways and wood block flooring under seating areas. The windows to the north and south aisles have plain glass, but with varied leading featuring Art Nouveau figures glazed in pale tints. The second window from the west in the north aisle is dedicated to the four sons of Sir George Newnes. The chancel contains coloured glass "placed at the conclusion of the Great War", with the centre light signed by A L Moore Del et Pinxt London. The north (Lady Chapel) lancets have marble inner shafts and stained glass, including work by Christopher Whall of 1907. This chapel, with 2 openings to the chancel, contains 3 sedilia and a piscina/aumbry with finely carved doors.

The fittings are exceptionally fine and largely said to have been carved by local craftsmen. Seating is in chairs. The octagonal stone font is partly 12th century but with recarving, and has a Jacobean carved cover. An octagonal oak carved pulpit bears a Latin inscription in memory of Newell and Anne Connop, 1899, and features fine carved panels including a Mother and Child, the Lamb, children with a crab, a ram and a donkey, beneath a basket-weave frieze. Two square candlesticks, approximately 0.15 metres square and 1.5 metres high, are in Art Nouveau style. The chancel contains finely carved stalls and altar rail with a stone chancel rail. The altar stands on 3 steps and is plain. The Lady Chapel altar has a polished brass front with plant and Tree of Life embellishment based on timber panels.

Monuments and panels include Royal Arms of William III (1833) painted on a square board beneath the west window; a simple slate tablet on a north aisle pier to victims of the 1952 floods; an inscribed memorial in the west bay of the nave to Hughe Wichehalse "Christide Eve" (1653); an unusual and significant surviving painted wooden memorial with carving by Phelps of Porlock to Thomas Grose (December 1734); a square stone with coat of arms and 2 stags' heads and initials RP; a wall-mounted headstone to John Brown (1736); a white marble oval tablet to William Lock et al (1773) signed J Beal, Barum; and a marble and alabaster monument to John Ward Holman (1936), described as a notable benefactor and 60-year churchwarden.

Though substantially a rebuilding, the church has considerable interest through its eclectic and sometimes eccentric detailing, and through its rich assembly of fittings, described by one authority as "one of the best collections of their date in Devon".