Devon’s enchanted extraordinary
Remarkable beauty, deep heritage, true community, all these and more are part of the ancient churches dotting our lush Devon landscapes… all built to celebrate a unique faith that arrived here over 1700 years ago and has shaped our society ever since.
Beautifully, our churches’ Late Medieval interiors are equal best in the country (with Norfolk, another wonder), and many of our Victorian churches were designed by the rock star architects of that age…
Prepare to be mind-boggled by the colours and the carvings, from the superb stained glass to the intricate woodwork and multi-textured stonework, arches and aisles dancing with ever-changing light, atmospheres brimming with peacefulness, scented with generations of care and tenderness…
Devon families can plot their histories by who got married, baptised or buried in which church when, some of their ancestors have lived in the area for hundreds and hundreds of years, others have pilgrimed the world… No coincidence that for a county of two coasts and the deepest tradition of sea-faring in the nation.
All this in breathtakingly gorgeous countryside that reveals splendour and cosiness with each new valley, hill and village.
Falling in love is just the start of exploring Devon and its churches…
Falling into the enchanted extraordinary is the happy ever after.
links to topics on this page
A real beauty, All Saints Church, Combeinteignhead
Single track high-hedged lanes that make maps look like complicated works of fiction, toilets few and far between, lunch and coffee stops even more so, country roads that seem to be reverting back to farm tracks…
WIth views through gates and hedge gaps that take the breath away, flashes of wonder as brooks tumble glittering through wooded combes, cresting a hill to see half of Devon below you, quilted with fields and trees and dotted with beautiful churches…
Approaching a new church, glorying in its bucolic enchantment, wandering the churchyard, gazing at the architecture, its shapes and lines, glass twinkling, shadows and light, stone and slate, now part of the very landscape, and then easing open the main door…
Peace and serenity fill the scented air, centuries of care and compassion unroll before you as this particular church slowly reveals its charm, woodwork and stone, carvings and colours…
Then the details dance out, the sunbeams flirting with the textures, new magic in every caress, the shapes of ancient art, the glowing glass, the wonderful stone foliage, the carefully designed sight lines…
And always the intricacies, the little features that make all this oh so human, the roof bosses (do take close focus binoculars, please) sticking their tongues out, the intricate medieval nature carvings, the wonderful little scenes hidden in the magnificent Victorian stained glass windows, the floors creating their own rough geography…
Whatever your passion is, history, art, architecture, ancestors, countryside, curiosity, society, parish, faith, pilgrimage, geology, whatever it is we all leave with more, that glimpse of wonder beyond beauty, that sense of folk building and caring and repairing and loving their community’s centre down the centuries, their own art, their own glorious statement that life, even accounting for all its pains and worries and traumas…
That life can touch heaven.
To make a list of all the sights in a Devon church and to describe their histories and purposes, that is a deeply ambitious project… which, luckily, we have in hand on our sister site, DevonChurchLand. It is early days yet, but we intend to build out the information there over the next year or two.
Meanwhile in our medieval churches you will find some fascinating architecture, some very elegant and some very rural work, both built with passion and love. In these churches there are some of the things that Devon is justly famous for, all medieval, including stunningly carved rood screens, bench ends, roof bosses and pillar capitals, some with the original colouring and equally original paintings of saints and more.
The Victorians brought a lot of beauty too, whether renovating existing churches or building anew; their stained glass art is second to none, their new altars, tilework, religious carving and use of stone are magnificent… But one thing they really brought to the party was an astoundingly modern architecture, rhyming with the medieval but very much its own master, called Neo-Gothic. It is wonderful.
But then, rather than resting on their laurels, they decided to disassemble their own explosion of creativity into a multitude of even newer pathways. The results can be astonishing.
The only thing we would urge you to bring is a pair of close focus binoculars, they add immensely to the wonder of the details, revealing intricacies and artistries in wood, stone and glass that our naked eyes miss out on.
Oh, and pack your lovely sense of wonder and awe, they will flourish like our lush Devon countryside.
Some of the incredible historical riches in Devon’s Churches
-
- Uffculme Church detail
-
- Uffculme Church fascinating sculptures
-
- Uffculme Church fascinating sculpture
-
- Uffculme Church wooden sculpture
-
- Uffculme Church detail
-
- Uffculme Church ancient detail
-
- Uffculme Church Rood Screen
-
- Uffculme Church roof boss
-
- Manaton Church painted wood
-
- Manaton Church bend end
-
- Malborough Church, beautiful interior
-
- Malborough Church roof structure
-
- Coryton Church, humble interior
-
- Combe Martin Church interior
-
- Combe Martin Church bench end
-
- Combe Martin Church sculpture
-
- Combe Martin Church stained glass window
-
- Combe Martin Church contemporary window
-
- Combe Martin Church carved beauty
-
- Combe Martin Church detail
-
- Combe Martin Church Rood Screen
-
- Bickleigh Church detail
-
- Bickleigh Church detail
-
- Bickleigh Church bench end
-
- Bickleigh Church window detail
-
- Bickleigh Church font
-
- Bickleigh Church exterior detail
-
- Combeinteignhead Church font
-
- Combeinteignhead Church detail
-
- Dunchideock Church roof boss
-
- Dunchideock Church font
-
- Dunchideock Church
-
- Marwood Church gravestone
-
- Marwood Church beautiful light
-
- Marwood Church carved head
-
- Sampford Peverell interior
-
- Sampford Peverell organ pipes
-
- Sampford Peverell detail
-
- Sampford Peverell stained glass window
All our enchanting parish churches here for you, mapped and classified.
Did you know? Devon has over 620 parish churches, most of them Medieval or Victorian, and all of them requiring constant repair and upkeep as well as upgrading for modern needs. 176 Methodist churches, 61 Roman Catholic, as well as Baptist, URC and Congregational.
What do the church symbols mean?
