Church Of The Holy Cross

The Church of the Holy Cross is a parish church dating to the 14th and 15th centuries, with a tower built in the early 16th century. It underwent extensive restoration in 1857, when a porch and vestry were added. Further restoration occurred in 1924 to the tower, and in 1967 when the church was reroofed. The church is constructed of red sandstone rubble with Ham stone dressings, and has decorative patterned clay tiles on its south side facing the village, decorative ridge tiles, and coped verges.

The church comprises a three-stage west tower, a south porch abutting a south chapel, a two-bay nave, a north-east vestry, and a chancel. The tower features a quatrefoil pierced parapet continued around a stair turret on its north face, gargoyles, and diagonal buttresses. It has two-light bell openings with Somerset tracery. The second stage is unlit, whilst the west face has a three-light window above a decorative spandrel of a four-centred arch head doorway. A 20th-century door is present. The south face of the nave has a three-light window, the wall splayed out with a visible buttress behind a 19th-century porch with a moulded arch and a 19th-century door incorporating the remains of a holy water stoup. A projecting chapel has two-light south and east windows. The chancel’s south wall has a two-light window, and the east wall a three-light window. The vestry has a two-light east window and a north-facing door. A substantial buttress sits at the junction of the vestry and nave, possibly forming part of a former rood stair. Two three-light mullioned windows with hood moulds are also present.

Inside, the tower reveals exposed rubble and rendered surfaces. A chamfered chancel arch and a four-centred tower arch, chamfered in two orders with the date 1884 carved on the north face, are notable. The chapel has a Perpendicular arch cut back, with an angel corbel inserted above two shafts on the east wall, dedicating the space to William de Vernai, who died in 1333. The roofs are 19th-century, with a shallow barrel vault in the chancel, painted with decoration, and a moulded ribbed barrel vault in the nave, with a ceiled, billeted wall plate. The Vernai chapel has a 20th-century roof. Further features include an aumbry, a piscina, a sedilia, a moulded ogee-headed stair turret doorway, a slate memorial tablet to William North, who died in 1809, an octagonal font supported on four pillars, bench ends replicating 16th-century originals, and a 19th-century pulpit. John Peryn of Wellington bequeathed funds towards the building of the church tower in his will of 1509. The church shares a unique feature with St Mary, West Buckland: the stair turret is centrally placed on the tower wall rather than at a corner.