Church Of St Andrew

The Church of St Andrew is a Grade II* listed building located in Wivelscombe, constructed between 1827 and 1829 by architect Richard Carver. It is built from red sandstone with Ham stone dressings and features a low pitched Welsh slate roof, exemplifying the Perpendicular Gothic style. The church has a five-bay aisled and clerestoried nave, an outer south aisle, and four gabled porches at the corners, along with a polygonal apse, which is a rare survival.

At the west end, there is a tower with set back buttresses, consisting of three stages adorned with Somerset tracery in the bell openings and an embattled parapet. The west door is decorated with floral designs in the spandrels. The north aisle has four-light windows flanking a five-light window, while the apse features diagonal buttresses over a vaulted undercroft that provides access to catacombs. A rose window was added in 1915, and the outer south aisle contains four and five-light mullioned windows.

Inside, the church is plastered with a depressed four-centre arcade of standard Perpendicular section. The shallow plaster roof has ribs and bosses, and there is a depressed four-centre chancel arch leading to a painted plaster polygonal chancel apse. An early 19th-century gallery, now serving as an organ loft at the west end, is inscribed with the architect's name, Richard Carver. The interior also includes box pews from around 1829, an octagonal 14th-century font on a restored base, a late 19th-century cope chest, and a 20th-century pulpit that incorporates fragments of panelling from the medieval church. There is a 17th-century pulpit tester that is not in use, and imported mid-17th-century baluster-type altar rails. Notable tombs include two recumbent alabaster figures of Humphrey Wyndham, who died in 1622, and his wife, who died in 1620, along with an alabaster and marble wall tablet above them.