East Down Church of St John the Baptist Description
- Set far back from road, easy to miss
- Beautiful surroundings
- Fascinating and very special capital carvings
- Totally stunning 16th century carved font stand
- Lovely peaceful sanctuary
- Beautiful 16th century rood screen
- A good memorial or two
- Entrancing stained glass
East Down Church of St John the Baptist
Devon is rich in beauty and charm, and East Down happily joins in the dance…
The country abounds in beautiful woods, hanging on the sides of hills, and variegated rich picturesque views, both of sea and land.
As a Mr Pine of East Down wrote, one of whose family members, in the greatest display of marriage as performance art ever, wedded with a Coffin family lass and created the Pine-Coffin family.
There is a deep history to East Down way up in the North Devon hills as it is, a refuge for Old Catholics from the vicious inanities of Henry the Robber king and his vapid son had cowed England’s innocents, reaching far, far back to its old Brittonic name.
‘Down’ probably comes from old British Celtic ‘Dun’, pronounced ‘doon’, meaning fort, or settlement with some kind of defence, on a hill, a relatively rare place name survival before the Anglo-Saxon culture started assigning Old English to the landscape.
And talking about Anglo-Saxon culture, the hill just south of East Down Church is called Churchill, ‘Cercilla’ in the Domesday book, an Old English name with the same meaning (though there are lesser probabilities), most almost definitely proving the existence of a church or chapel there in Anglo Saxon times and likely enough earlier.
If the Anglo-Saxons, relative late-comers in Devon, said a place had a church or chapel it likely meant that it existed before their own appearance on the stage.
The church’s growth
The present East Down church probably started out as an estate church, quite possibly Saxon, before it became the main parish church.
Estates often build their own chapels to prevent their workers toddling off to a neighbour and picking up unsettling foreign habits, or alternatively because a long mud-walk in Devon winter weather was not really their idea of a Sunday jolly.
When East Down church became the main parish church is debatable. We do know that the tower has surviving thirteenth century fabric, was added to in the fifteenth when the south aisle was also put in, and was restored or repaired in 1672.
The north tower
The tower is called a transeptal tower, built where the original North Transept would have been.
There are about eighteen of these babes in Devon, mainly up in the North, and most are dated from Norman times with some, like here, from the thirteenth century.
Some folk reckon they come from copying, somewhat, Exeter Cathedral with its unique (in England) Norman transeptal towers, and the prevalence in north Devon is survivorship bias… This area was not as rich in the rest of Devon in the fifteenth century when so many churches in the county were totally rebuilt with west towers.
It is a possibility, in no way a certainty; my suspicion is that the positioning of towers was more lackadaisical way back when, at least hereabouts, and the adoption of west towers and the rebuilding of churches has erased evidence of previous habits.
The belfry bodge up
Though one certainty is that if we are looking for a definition of ‘long term bodge up’ then this belfry opening is certainly in the race.
Inside East Down Church
No bodge up here that is for sure, a careful restoration in 1888 put in the benches and a new chancel interior. Fortunately the walls were left plastered, the Victorian tendency to strip everything to bare stone avoided here.
The plaster ceiling was stripped though, the old timbers behind now displayed in all their glory.
Mysterious capital carvings
The Late Medieval pillar carvings are even more glorious… along with deeply mysterious in concert with a healthy dose of dumbbfoundery.
They are said to be carved with hunting scenes but even rural moi in my wild country days never met anyone who set out to catch animals by their tail or head… apart from fish that is, hastily drawing a veil over a particularly personal history of entrepreneurial fishing.
The true interpretation of these magically quirky creations is probably lost forever, but there seem to be elements that might point to meanings… though that ‘might’ is sure doing some heavy lifting here.
In the top carving, that plant looks suspiciously like representations of the Tree of Life that I have seen from the same period. The tree appears first in the Garden of Eden where it gives everlasting life to those who eat its fruit.
It is a common motif in the bible thereafter, and even appears in the very last book, Revelation
Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
Revelation 22:14 KJV
The city being the City of God.
It is a symbol of Christ, who brings everlasting life to those who follow his path, and here it is behind a bullock held by two men who potentially could be offering it as as a sacrifice, as they did back in Christ’s day.
A sacrifice in that Jewish culture, in this context, was a ‘purification offering’, and very specifically, a bullock or bull was a purification offering for an unintended sin by the community as a whole or by the High Priest; a sin that that the individual/s was/were ignorant of doing until the ‘oh golly gumdrops, now I have to off a bullock’ moment.
All this is very carefully detailed, very detailed indeed, in Leviticus chapter four.
The point being that in Catholic (and many other churches, including the Church of England) terms, Christ’s death and Resurrection cleansed us of all our sins, and this scene is showing strong echoes of that act.
Whilst adjoining this is a cow (those udders are a giveaway) with a human head, an abomination if you will, a monstrosity. The men are not touching this lass, and this is important, as it represents the world where we do not dedicate our sins to the Divine, where we do not repent, where we do not change… the path of a life without the Divine, the diseased path of horror and disgust.
More mysteries
Whilst here the lads are holding branches of the tree of life and a scroll on which was most likely painted a biblical text, probably related to the meaning of the carvings.
So an interpretation, but only that. Others are welcome.
The gorgeous font and stand
At least the bodaciousness of this beauty is crystal clear, a beautiful late-ish sixteenth century font stand with a later font bowl and cover.
The bowl and cover
The font bowl itself is marble and maybe later seventeenth century or early eighteenth century. It is well proportioned, a good, simple design with a font cover equally elegant; taste was turning to the more restrained classical after the whimsical fripperies of earlier days.
The font stand
Like its very own font stand, full-blown Renaissance style with foliate heads and critters supporting sweet little humans at the top. Possibly a reflection on the suspicion that all around is a unseen world between heaven and earth, a world of the essential essences of all things, the essential quality of all individual things both concrete and abstract.
Though to be fair by this time there was likely a fair amount of ‘let’s see how fripacious I can get’ from the carvers.
Renaissance wonder
As seen here, in gorgeous artful wonder. I particularly like Old Grumpy Drawers top right who seems most put out having to dress up in leaves… The essence of Grumpiness perhaps…
There is a little historical distinction to this creation, it seems to be one of the very few church furnishings created soon after the Reformation. Once Henry decided to pillage the Old Church of England beautiful furnishings were taken off the table, but this one seems to have slipped through the net.
As ever though, exact dating without provenance is an art rather than a science, and as this font stand rhymes with the rood screen, which is almost surely pre-Reformation, then the jury is out.
East Down Sanctuary
Through that rood screen is the tidy chancel with the Victorian stone altar back and a rather nice East Window.
The East Window
By CE Kempe, one of the most famous Victorian stained glass artists and probably one of the most prolific. His signature is a wheat sheaf, seen in the rich top area.
A crucifixion scene with the Virgin Mary on the right and, unusually, John the Baptist on the left, identified by the text above his head taken from John’s gospel:
The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
John 1:29
The Latin states the ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world’ part, which rhymes so beautifully with that interpretation of the pillar carving described previously.
I would love to think this was by design; sadly very speculative.
John the Baptist
Kempe was good, very good, and John’s face, the details, the character, the shell-shocked expression of one who has met the Divine and life is changed forever… Very good indeed.
And that background of flowers and plants, God’s glorious creation behind all; a deep theology saturates this beautiful window.
The Pine memorial
Back out of the chancel, in the south aisle, is this 1663 memorial to Edward Pine and his wife, less a work of grand art than a statement of status.
They lived next door in East Down House, the local big estate, and Eddie had fought for the Royalists in the civil wars. Here the two busts and inscription take centre place, with the coats of arms being of secondary importance, which does not mean they are not important.
This design is a good example of the rise of the individual as opposed to their family connections.
A hundred and fifty years before or so memorials and tombs were very much about heraldry, the importance of the family’s descent and position in the social world; by Eddie’s time the individual/s remembered and their accomplishments were front and foremost, as shown by this portion of the inscription:
Sometimes Lieutenant-Colonel of Sir Hugh Pollard in the late unhappie warrs
The change was far more gradual and ragged than the described linear process indicates, but it was real.
The busts
As shown by the bust details, which seem to be portraits as opposed to generic depictions. Eddie also is in his armour for that lieutenant-colonel thing, and his wife is modestly dressed as a dutiful lassie.
East Down rood screen
And only a hundred and fifty years before, give or take a decade or two, this babe was built and what a babe it is.
By the 1900s only the uprights and arches and some of the vaulting remained, at least according to the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette when it reported on its restoration by Herbert Read in 1925. Some folk might consider that the amount of restoration makes it a lesser creation…
Not me though, and the Herbert Read workshop’s genius is wonderful.
Entangled wonder
Which seems to be well shown here, this being their work according to the reports.
The intricate entwinements, the dynamic control, the flow… Herbie and his posse must have lived and breathed Medieval Devon woodwork to recreate such delight.
Though the renovation details were not imagined, apparently there were enough bits and pieces still extant to give a good guide to the actual design details.
The screen vaulting
Renaissance folk
A closer look reveals the original work, with the renovations done in different coloured wood as is best practise. Each individual lives and breathers character and if they do not hop down from the screen and bop around the church when no-one is around then Devon ain’t the Devon I dream of.
These two do seem be ready for a bit of a barney, there is that. Of course, when they are photographed again they will probably be grinning with delight at each other, there is that as well…
As an aside, the screen restoration was done partly to commemorate Benjamin Haughton, a somewhat well-known artist who lived next door and whose ‘favoured subjects were quiet rural backwaters, woodland, trees, ponds and meadows’, a very fine rhyme with the screen foliage.
As the font stand is also, a continuation and expansion of the Renaissance vaulting here.
Some French stained glass
One thing that is not related by style to the church, or even the country come to that, is this pretty.
It is by a French stained glass artist, Lucien-Léopold Lobin and was installed in 1891 in memory of Jessie Startin, the wife of Henry Startin who lived in France by this time.
It is, for Devon, very unusual. St John the Baptist, on the right, is included as this church’s patron.
Some details
The main story though is Jessie being ushered by an angel to meet Christ, who is welcoming her and displaying his stigmata, the wounds on his hands made when he was nailed to the cross.
A beautiful church
And meanwhile the Holy Spirit hangs around this church, here on the beautifully worked old altar cloth, amidst enchanted flowers and plants that reflect the magnificence entwining the hills and valleys outside.
It is an entrancingly subtle church this with echos of a past faith and the beauty of ancient artists along with their Victorian descendants.
It is also difficult to find, hidden from the road, no village to mark it, just a formal stone pillared entrance that also serves the big manor house.
Park outside, walk up the path, and leaving seems out of the question, here peace and beauty is forever.
