Church Of St Edward King And Martyr

Church of St Edward King and Martyr

This is an Anglican parish church, predominantly of the 14th and 15th centuries, with 19th-century work including a major restoration in 1884. The building is constructed of rubble with freestone dressings and slate roofs with coped verges topped by cruciform finials.

The church comprises a two-bay nave with a south porch and south transept (which served as the Tynte family pew), a two-bay chancel, a north chapel added in the early 17th century as a tomb chapel for the Halswell family, and a west tower. The style throughout is Perpendicular.

The west tower is embattled with two stages and angle buttresses that terminate halfway up. It features offsets, gargoyles, and a corner stair turret with slit windows. The bell chamber contains two-light windows of Somerset type with quatrefoil interlace filling, a three-light west window, and a door.

The nave has three-light pointed-head windows. The south transept is a single bay with a 19th-century three-light window and door. The chancel has two-light square-head windows and a three-light east window. The tomb chapel is lit by windows with two and three lights, each with four-centred heads, and also has two oval windows and a west doorway with a porch featuring a four-centred arch outer door.

The south porch is benched, floored with flagstones, and has a late 15th-century wagon roof with ribs and bosses. The interior is plastered with tiled, encaustic, flagstone and marble floors and cast-iron heater grilles. The nave retains a 15th-century wagon roof with ribs and bosses and a moulded wall plate. The chancel has a late 19th-century wagon roof. The Tynte pew features a neo-Elizabethan plaster ceiling of around 1830 with a frieze of heraldic achievements. The tomb chapel has a beamed ceiling. A moulded 14th-century tower archway and 19th-century chancel arch are notable internal features, as is a squint to the Tynte pew and a 15th-century moulded beam at the entrance to the tomb chapel.

The church is very richly furnished, mostly with items provided by the Halswell-Tynte-Kemys family of Halswell House. The tomb chapel contains a chest tomb to Sir Nicholas Halswell (died 1633) with a recumbent effigy beneath a canopy with heraldic achievement, flanked by kneeling figures of their sons and daughters. A late 17th-century Baroque monument to the Halswell family features a Latin inscription with flanking columns and pediment and allegorical figures. Other monuments include a marble sleeping child of Isabella Anne Kemys (died 1835) by Raffaeli Monti, and a monument to Elizabeth Kemys Tynte (1838) by Hopper of London. A wooden cartouche bears the Tynte arms. The floor contains memorial slabs. The chapel also houses a late 17th-century chest, a Jacobean altar table, and a clarinet dating to 1827.

The chancel contains a 14th-century aumbry and piscina, a slate wall monument to William Trivett (died 1730), a monument to Anne Kemys Tynte (died 1836) by Hopper, and another by Hopper to Henry Parsons. An embroidered pulpit fall dates to 1733. Jacobean coffin stools, 19th-century decalogue plaques and choir stalls, and late 19th-century stained glass are also present.

The nave displays a large wall monument to Sir John Tynte with a bust in a Rococo cartouche by J. M. Rysbrack (1742), and another to Sir Charles Kemys Tynte (died 1785) by Nollekens featuring a medallion and female figure extinguishing a torch, probably representing fame. There are four further 19th-century Kemys Tynte monuments. An octagonal 15th-century font and a wooden pulpit of around 1630 with a tester of around 1690, decorated with strapwork, are significant features. Remains of some 17th-century pews, refurbished in the 19th century, survive, along with the upper and lower entrances to a former rood and the rood stair. Royal arms of 1707 and a lectern of 1902 complete the nave furnishings.

The Tynte pew retains 18th-century seating and displays the helmet, sword, gauntlets and crest of Sir Nicholas Halswell. Beneath the tower are 18th-century funeral hatchments and early 18th-century painted panelling, alongside a charity plaque of 1832. The church contains five early bells and a clock by John Hunt of Bridgwater dating to 1734. Late 19th-century stained glass fills the west window.