Rose Ash Church of St Peter Basics
Listed building grade 2*
Regularly open
Address
Church of St Peter
Rose Ash
EX36 4RB
Geographical coordinates
50°58’54.7″N 3°43’43.0″W (enter these in your smartphone navigator)
Devonchurchland says…
Up in the northern hills of Devon, this is a charming church with some delights inside.
The main structure is Victorian rebuild with only the medieval tower remaining from earlier times, but inside…
There is good Late Medieval rood screen, a top quality, and very rare, 17th century screen around the north chapel and a most lovely Arts and Crafts tower screen. A lovely collection.
Then there the Late Medieval roof bosses, a real fun collection with faces and foliage galore.
A good interior is capped by a gorgeous collection of 19th and early 20th century stained glass, the ‘Christ the Gardener’ window is worth a visit alone.
With his church too, as so many glorious Devon, the journey here is a pure delight through out beautiful landscape.
Outline
PLAN
- Nave
- Chancel
- 4-bay north aisle
- 1 bay to the chancel
- West tower
- South porch
- North-east vestry
AGE
- Rebuilt 1889-92 by St Aubyn and Wadling
- Surviving medieval fabric is the tower, possibly C14
- And the C15 or early C16 north aisle
BUILT FROM
- Slatestone rubble
- Slate roof with pierced C19 ridge tiles
- Freestone dressings
Exterior
WEST TOWER
- 2-stage battlemented
- Difficult to date
- Possibly pre-Perpendicular
- Diagonal buttresses to the west.
- West doorway has a crude rounded chamfered doorframe
- Late C19 door
- Art Nouveau strap hinges
- 3-light west window
- Renewed uncusped intersecting tracery
- 2-light traceried belfry openings on all 4 faces
- Unglazed slit window on south face
NAVE
- 2 3-light late C19 Perpendicular traceried windows
- One on either side of the south porch
PORCH
- Late C19
- A double-chamfered outer doorway
- Hood mould
- 2-leaf C19 outer door
- With metal grille and ornamental strap hinges
NORTH AISLE
- 3 square-headed north windows
- Tudor arched lights
- 3-light Perpendicular west and east windows
CHANCEL
- Snecked
- Datestone of 1892 on the east wall
- And the text “Laus Deo”
- 3-light late C19 Perpendicular traceried east window
- 2 smaller 2-light C19 Perpendicular south windows
VESTRY
- 3-centred chamfered stone doorframe
- 3-light west window
- Ogee-headed lights in a square-headed frame
- Chimney on the north wall
- Octagonal stone shaft
Interior
VARIOUS
- Plastered walls
- Except for the tower
- Late C19 timber chancel arch
- On stone corbels
- Plain, rounded tower arch
- 4-bay Perpendicular arcade
- Capitals to the shafts of the piers only
- Late C19 unceiled wagon roof
- Carved medieval bosses and moulded ribs to the north aisle
- Nave has 1893 carved bench ends
- On the local C16 pattern
- And a co-eval tower screen
- Open traceried timber drum pulpit
- 1893
- Font is probably also late C19
- Square bowl on a scalloped base with cylindrical stem
SREENS
- Splendid 1618 screen to the north aisle
- Matching parclose
- Lower part consists of a plank and muntin dado
- Shallow carving and carved scroll stops
- Below a rail carved with intersecting round-headed arches
- Balustrade of bobbin-turned balusters
- Flanking a round-headed doorway into the east end of the aisle
- Parclose has a similar doorway into the chancel
- Both doorways crowned with pediments
- Painted with the armorial bearings of:
- James I
- Ann of Denmark his wife,
- Charles Stuart when prince
- Frieze has a painted text from the Coverdale Bible
PORCH
- C19 arch braced roof
- Floor of slates laid on end
- C19 4-centred moulded inner doorframe
- 2-leaf inner door of 1935
- The village stocks are kept in the porch
CHANCEL
- C20 stone reredos
- Blind tracery in a crested stone frame
- Late C17/early C18 communion rails
- Alternating twisted and reeded balusters
- Choir stalls with a memorial date of 1896
- Traceried frontals and carved bench ends
MONUMENT
- North wall
- 2 C17 slate memorials to members of the Southcomb family
- Late C19 brass to James Schoolbred, died 1892
- Aisle
- Odd memorial commemorating John Davy
- “14 years provincial grand mark master mason of Devonshire, d. A.D. 1887”
- AL 5887, signed W.P. Cooper Union Street, Plymouth
- John Davy owned Rose Ash House (q.v.)
STAINED GLASS
- Chancel east window
- Memorial date of 1892
- Probably by Drake of Exeter
- South window with memorial date of 1909
- By Hardman
Other information
Thoroughly rebuilt 1889-92 by St Aubyn and Wadling for the Reverend Henry Grainger Southcomb
Perpendicular style
In 1882 the church was described by the Archdeacon of Barnstaple as “perhaps the most dilapidated and most unsightly in its interior of all in the deanery”. The late C19 restoration and late C19/early C20 fittings were almost all paid for by the Southcomb family who were rectors (and mostly squarsons) for 270 years until 1945.
The letters IVIM also appear on the screen, W.H. Wilkin suggests that they stand for Johannis Venner in Memoriam and that the screen was erected to commemorate the Reverend John Venner, died 1618.
This page contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0
