Shaldon Church of St Peter The Apostle Basics
Listed building grade 1
Regularly open
Address
Shaldon Church of St Peter The Apostle
Bridge Road
Shaldon
Teignmouth
Devon
TQ14 0DB
Geographical coordinates
50°32’31.3″N 3°30’33.6″W (enter these in your smartphone navigator)
Devonchurchland says…
Shaldon Church is a work of pure genius by the famous architect Edmund H Sedding.
Set beside the River Teign just before it meets the sea, from the outside it looks like an interesting Victorian style church, even though it was consecrated in 1902. But think again…
Because the interior is a magnificent mix of Arts and Crafts and Gothic, well sorted together to make a totally new vision which prefigures the modern machine age.
Sedding’s use of grey/green polyphant stone, local red stone and soft white beerstone brings the colours of the surrounding cliffs, water and waves inside.
His beautiful vaulted roof, magnificent West Window and stark structure let light play around the inside most beautifully.
Then there is the stone chancel screen, polyphant again, with strong tracery and pretty angels at its entrance. Stunning.
The apsed chancel with raised marble altar and goodly woodwork is another beauty, the Lady Chapel next door bringing its own marvellous into play.
Not forgetting the pulpit, a stunning combination of Devon marble and limestone.
This truly is a unique church, worth a long visit or three to really appreciate its special nature.
Outline
PLAN
- Six bay truncated cruciform plan
- Semi-octagonal apsed chancel
- North transept
- Low gabled vestry with cupola
- South east apsed chapel
AGE
- 1893-1902 by Edmund Sedding
- Flying buttresses added 1932 by W.D Caröe
BUILT FROM
- Mostly red sandstone
- With Cornish polyphant quoins
- Strings of Portland stone
- Polyphant to the clerestory
- Ham Hill stone flying buttresses
- All these and various marbles to the interior
- Slate roof
Exterior
WEST FRONT
- Low flat-roofed baptistery
- Between two lobbies
- These have pointed-arched doors to front
- Returns below flying buttresses filled in with panelled tracery
- Three lancet windows to the centre
- West window spanning the whole interior of the nave
- Set in a deeply recessed Gothic arch
- Two wide mullions
- Exuberant flowing cusped tracery
- Rising from the front of the baptistery are two wide shafts
- Banded red and white
- Reaching to the parapet of the nave
- High pointed arch connecting them has a banded gable end
- Gabled niche to the apex
- Containing a statue of St Peter
NAVE
- Castellated parapet
- Arcaded clerestory
- Alternate trefoil-headed leaded windows
- Niches
- Moulded coping to the parapet of the buttressed aisles
- Six 1932 flying buttresses
Interior
NAVE
- Polyphant stone widely-chamfered rectangular-section piers
- Slightly concave facets
- Support Portland stone pointed arches
- Alternate blocked voussoirs
- Polyphant stone niches to the spandrels
- Large granite blocks to the tops
- Support substantial white marble transverse arches
- Wrought-iron ties and ornamental verticals
- Articulate the panelled marble and Polyphant stone barrel vault
- Widely-splayed pointed arches to trefoil-headed clerestory windows.
- The roofs of the aisles are planked with crown-post trusses;
- Red sandstone walls
- Alternate two- and three-light mullioned windows
- Cusped drop tracery to the arches
- Font is a white marble figure of St John the Baptist
- Bearing a clam-shell
- Stations of the cross
- Carved wood
PULPIT
- Grand
- On a black marble octagonal stepped base
- To a shaft surrounded by red marble colonnettes
- With grey caps and bases
- These support a pedestal to the body of the pulpit
- Which has green marble panels with trefoil-headed openings
- Dark brown marble moulded base and cornice
- Shafts at the angles are of very elaborately-carved white marble
- Curved figured marble steps
- Arched below,
- Wrought-iron balustrade
CHANCEL SCREEN
- Elaborate polyphant and marble
- Pierced parapet behind 5 statues
- On a solid cornice
- Crucifix above the central figure
- Inscription, “Dignus est Angus qui occisus est accipere virtutem”
- Carved into the cornice over five arches
- Which are pointed to the sides with wrought-iron infill
- Semicircular to the centre
- All with drop tracery
- Curved white marble steps lead to double fretted metal gates
- Flanked by a polished green marble plinth
- Polished moulded marble coping
- Carved marble communion rail
CHANCEL
- Semi-octagonal
- Two and a half bays
- Similar to the nave
- Far more ornamented
- Walls of the apse are banded grey and white
- Panels of the roof are smaller and diminish around the apse
- Principal ribs resting on niches
- Statues and elaborate corbels flanked by windows
- Block voussoirs to the arches are richly carved
- Floor is of diagonally-laid black and white marble squares
- Black, white and red marble steps to the altar
- Coloured marble altar
- Triple arcade
- Plinth and cornice
- Organ to the left of the chancel
- Rebuilt in 1985
- Ornamented case
LADY CHAPEL
- Similar but smaller in scale,
- Lit entirely by richly-coloured trefoil-headed lancet windows
- Panels of the roof are smaller
- Two bay arcade to the south has cylindrical capitals to columns
- With four colonnettes
- Altar has a carved white marble communion rail
- Ornamental marble floor
- Vestry has a planked ceiling
- Red sandstone walls
STAINED GLASS
- By Sedding
- To the nave, chancel and Lady Chapel
Other information
Spectacular Arts and Crafts Free Gothic.
A tower was to have been erected on the north riverside.
Edmund Sedding was responsible for many church restorations in the south west and was nephew to J.D Sedding, architect of Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, London.
Pevsner describes the church as a superlative example of Arts and Crafts inventiveness.
The original cost, including fitting, heating and lighting was £2,500.
This page contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0
