Stockland Church of St Michael Description
- A beautifully elegant churchyard
- A peacefully spacious church
- A fine west door
- Good 15th century stone carving, including a font and capitals
- Well carved victorian poppyheads in the chancel
- Some top quality Victorian stained glass
- An astounding 20th century century west window
Stockland Church of St Michael
Wandering around the exterior of Stockland St Michael’s is a pure delight, it has one of the most elegant churchyards in rural Devon, dotted with various trees and and beautifully overlaid with neatly mown grass; a chic miniature country park, absolutely wonderful.
The downside being that those trees make it impossible to get a clear view of the church as a whole, a respectable trade off I venture.
It is also in the Blackdown Hills, a beautiful area of Devon full of little backroads and charming views around each and every curve.
The church and parish
A pretty little church too, draping itself in trees and light as it does, seemingly over-shy to come out to play; mainly thirteenth century, with a fifteenth century tower and aisle, charm through the ages.
The name itself probably indicates that there was a Saxon estate here whose primary function was to supply a larger estate or religious institution nearby with food and other provisions; the fact that it had three mills in 1066 seems to support this possibility.
The west door
That does not mean it was a poor parish, the intricate carving around the fifteenth century tower door indicates otherwise.
The porch
Whilst the Victorian south porch is probably a marriage of old and new, looking at the distinct styles of stonework and that lovely rough arch over the door.
Flint stone here too, a function of being so near the Dorset border with its different geology. For many an age this parish was actually part of Dorset, an island in the surrounding Devon parishes (apart from its buddy to the south, Dalton).
It was taken over by Devon in the nineteenth century when the bureaucrats played swapsies with various flotsam and jetsam left adrift by deep history.
Inside Stockland Church
Inside Stockland church is a simplicity, heavily restored in the nineteenth century with new pews, sanctuary and roof.
Very good medieval stone carving
The font though is pure fifteenth century with its so very Gothic motifs, yet still somewhat plain with no religious symbols or heraldry.
Though taking it on its own terms, a goodly piece covered in decoration as it is.
The foliage on the capitals
On the other hand the carvings on the aisle pillar capitals are an enchantment, real quality foliage, those leaves and they way the twine and twist are near lifelike, some of the best I have seen.
The sanctuary
And the simplicity returns with the Victorian chancel and sanctuary. There is a certain reverence here too, leaving aside its main purpose to bring us nearer to the Divine; the original window interiors and walls have been left, just somewhat cleaned up.
This works well with the new floor, the pattern riffing off medieval styles, and a simple altar and altar back, a renovation by folk venerating tradition.
The east window
The 1853 East window follows suit, colourful and simply displaying the Four Evangelists, catching the Medieval well whilst still offering more with its powerful lines and range of colours.
Symbols of the Four Evangelists
Below each evangelist is his symbol.
The majority of local churches have these in stained glass from some era or another, and their various interpretations are a delight to come across, as these are.
Here relatively static, posing stiffly for the camera so to speak, yet donning their Sunday best wings for the occasion and what wonderful wings they are.
St John’s eagle has had his feathers well groomed and St Mark’s lion has visited the mane hair dresser and do not they look the bees knees? Just wonderful.
Victorian woodwork
Keeping to good simplicity, the poppy head carving on the choir stalls is a fineness, complementing the foliage on the pillar capitals very well indeed.
The way the two bottom leaves curve and flow is very well done, whist the central foliage looks like a new leaf just reaching up to unfurl. A very vibrant piece.
Down the nave
Looking down the nave there is that sense of space that this church has, more than many another, partly because it is heavily windowed with a lot of clear glass, and partly its height.
The fact that is all gloriously white certainly helps a grand amount, and makes a goodly change from some of the near-caves that I have been known to adore.
That ringing floor in the tower is a beaut too, the bell ringers being on full display; not very Devon either… As a generalisation, folk usually ring the bells from the tower ground floor in Devon, surely nothing to do with the cider and beer they were known to have demanded from the wardens and vicar in the past.
Other regions have different traditions and I cannot speak for them all, but a fair few of them have always rang from the first floor or higher.
The tower screen
The tower screen Is a quiet beauty too, a lovely little meditation in softly carved brown set off by that red curtain.
Sometimes living with beauty gets one blasé about it, and here the screen says hello to that thought and shows how wrong we can be.
Glorious stained glass
Now I have praised the clarity of light in this church the stained glass comes out to disagree most enchantingly; nearly all of it in the chancel, very nice too.
Three windows are dedicated to the Rev Cox, his wife and daughter; the Rev died in 1894 after twenty-five years of service in this parish,. They are all by the same designer whose name I wished I knew, and all are worth a good long look.
Here on the left angels are bring the news of Christ’s birth to the shepherds, while on the right Christ receives gifts from angels, being treated as the King of the World.
The depth of the colours really catches the eye, not captured fully in my images. They really are most arresting, glowing with rich depth, promises of wonders and enchantments behind the reality of the glass.
Passion and Resurrection
The same in this window, though the scenes go from sadness to triumph.
On the left Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying for a way out from his path to crucifixion and yet understanding that it is all God’s will; very human, very all of us.
On the right the three Marys being told that Christ’s post-crucifixion body is not in his tomb because he has risen from the dead.
The right hand Mary does seem to have a somewhat determined expression, as if she has been lied to by enough strangers and she is about to subject the angel to a body search to check there is no corpse hidden in those robes.
The colours again, and the compositions of course. There is such a lot of good art going on here.
The magnificent west window
The West Window though, if colour is your thing it surely is an ever-giving delight and I have never seen its like in a church before.
Weirdly enough the one type of building that it reminds me of is a Japanese Wedding Palace; these are works of beauty, full of elegance and colour, sometimes muted, sometimes not, all with that wonderful Japanese talent to make everything stylish and beautiful. They are used for weddings unsurprisingly, or at least pageant-like weddings.
The formal tying of the knot in Japan is always the civil registration, but a lot of young couples want a ‘western’ style wedding with a non-Japanese man acting as the minister and the full dress-up panoply. Wedding Palaces are built to offer this experience along with full catering and more.
And this window certainly seems a refugee from over there.
But it is not, and it fits well.
A world where roses bloom
And when you speak, angels sing from above
Everyday words seem to turn into love songs
Give your heart and soul to me
And life will always be
“La vie en rose”
Édith Piaf
It is, of course, a vision of heaven, of an ocean of magnificence forever, a… Well, all our imaginings of heaven are only human, wrong with an underlying truth.
We can but glimpse it in acts of compassion and kindness, in those feelings of beauty and passion that brush our souls, in the indwelling of grace as we open our hearts and souls…
And this quiet church, with its absurdly graceful churchyard, its spacious quietness of an interior and its flashes of magnificent colours, does the job so well.
