Christow Church of Saint James the Apostle Basics
Listed building grade 1
Regularly open
Address
Church of Saint James the Apostle
Christow
Exeter
EX6 7LZ
Geographical coordinates
50°39’12.1″N 3°38’51.9″W (enter these in your smartphone navigator)
Devonchurchland says…
Set in a charming village in the very beautiful Teign Valley, Christow Church is full of wonder.
The Norman font has a lot of presence, and the medieval bench ends, few as they are, match it.
Then there is a well restored 16th century rood screen painted more recently to give the idea of what it used to be like.
The Late Medieval roof bosses are very fine too, showing jangling folk, demons and many other subjects.
The chancel is full of good memorials to the Exmouth family.
Add in some charming stained glass and an excellent plasterwork Charles II coat of arms and this is a very fine church indeed.
Outline
PLAN
- Nave
- Chancel
- 4-bay north and south aisles
- South porch
- West tower
- North-east vestry
AGE
- C12 font
- Medieval fabric C15
- Restoration of 1862 by Edward Ashworth
- Included rebuilding the chancel, the porch, adding the vestry
- Reseating and repairing and repainting the screen
BUILT FROM
- Granite ashlar tower
- Remainder of the church rubble and snecked stone
- Slate roofs
Exterior
WEST TOWER
- Tall
- Slim
- Battlemented granite ashlar
- 3 stages with battlementing
- And obelisk pinnacles
- Set back buttresses
- String courses
- Shallow-moulded granite west doorway
- Dated 1680 (presumably a restoration date) on the arch
- 3-light Perpendicular granite traceried west window
- 2-light chamfered belfry openings on all 4 faces
- Rectangular openings at bellringers’ stage on east and west faces
NORTH AISLE
- Set back buttresses
- 4 C19 Perpendicular 3-light windows
- Retaining medieval mullions and jambs
- Buttresses with set-offs between
- Similar east window
- 2-light square-headed cusped west window
SOUTH AISLE
- Set back buttresses
- 2 windows east of porch
- One to west
- Perpendicular, 3-light with C19 tracery
- Smaller west window
- Tall 3-light C19 Perpendicular east window
CHANCEL
- C19
- Granite ashlar quoins
- Set back buttresses
- 3-light C19 Perpendicular east window
- Carved label stops
- South side
- 1 buttress
- C19 moulded priest’s door
- 1-light cusped window
- Carved label stops
- North window
PORCH
- Set back buttresses
- Shallow moulded granite outer doorway
- With NB carved on one jamb
- C19 hoodmould
- Carved label stops
- Good ledger stone used as paving slab outside porch
- Commemorating Nicholas and Walter Busell
- Died 1631 and 1632
- C19 arched brace roof to porch
- With crude chamfered rounded inner doorway
- Probably C17 door
VESTRY
- North-east vestry
- 2-light cusped square headed window on the east side
- Moulded doorway on the north side
Interior
VARIOUS
- Plastered walls
- C19 timber chancel arch
- On brattished corbels
- 4-bay granite arcades
- Conventional Perpendicular design
- Double chamfered tower arch
- Inner order on stone corbels
- Late C19 timber drum pulpit
- Carved panels incorporating C16 blind tracery
- C12 font
- Square scalloped bowl
- On a replaced cylindrical stem and plinth
- 1682 Royal Arms in plaster in high relief
- Names of Tho Moore and Chr Moore, churchwardens, below
ROOD SCREEN
- 5-bay rood screen
- Pevsner ‘A’type
- Coving missing
- Re-painted in the C19
- 3-bays of the screen
- Formerly across the south aisle
- Have been re-sited as the tower screen
ROOF
- Ceiled wagon roofs
- Carved bosses to nave
- Similar C19 roof to chancel
- Ceiled wagons without bosses
- To north and south aisles
SEATING
- C16 square-headed
- 2 tiers of blank tracery
- One carved with a pomegranate
- Fixed to later seating in the aisles
- With low door added in the C19
- Plain C19 benches in the nave
- Except for 2 rows facing north and south with carved frontals
CHANCEL
- 1860s stone reredos of 5 gabled bays
- With texts and paintings on tin
- In centre 3 bays
- Co-eval floor tiling
- C19 poppyhead choir stalls
- With traceried fronts
MONUMENTS
- Chancel
- Numerous C19 wall white marble wall monuments
- To the Exmouth family
- 2 of 1833 signed E. Gaffin, Regent Street, London
- One to the Right Honourable Pownoll Bastard Pellew
- With a mourning woman
- Second commemorating the Right Honourable Edward Pellew
- With a sarcophagus, urn and laurels
- Framed by half columns,
- Naval trophies above
- And long verse below recording Pellew’s rescue of 500 people from the wreck of the ‘Dutton’
- ” so, when this mighty orb, in dread alarm,/ shall crash in ruins, at its God’s decree;/May thy redeemer, with triumphant arm,/ from the vast wreck of all things – rescue thee”
- Nave
- A number of C19 wall monuments
- 2 fine slate-cut ledger stones
- Fixed to the west and north walls
- Commemorating Edmund Davis, died 1652
- And John Davys died 1682
STAINED GLASS
- Fragments of C15 canopy work and a figure
- In the easternmost window of the south aisle
- Some C18 bottle glass in the head tracery of the north aisle
- Outstanding Clayton and Bell glass
- Memorial date 1862
- In the east window of the south aisle
- Chancel east window probably by Drake of Exeter
- Memorial date of 1899
- Glass by Ward and Hughes in the window in the south aisle, first bay from the east
- Memorial date of 1913
- Window in north aisle, opposite the door
- Memorial date of 1867
- Probably by William Wailes
Other information
Largely Perpendicular
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