Church of St Michael

Details

865/5/104 BENDARROCH ROAD, WESTHILL 28-APR-52 CHURCH OF ST MICHAEL

II 1845-6 by a Mr Wollaston. 1978 W extension by Anthony Hollow.

MATERIALS: Local stone. Slate roofs (but with two skylights of transparent material on each side). Artificial stone for the extension.

PLAN: Nave, chancel, S porch, NE vestry, large extension to the W.

EXTERIOR: The church is built in the Early English style, hence the lancet windows. The nave and chancel are of five bays and under a continuous roof: no external distinction is made between these two main parts of the building. The bays are demarcated by buttresses with offsets and gabled tops. The E window consists of three graded lancets. On the N side the vestry is under its own gable. Over the W end of the nave there is an octagonal bellcote with lancet openings on the intermediate faces: it is crowned by a stone spirelet. At the W end there is a large single-storey extension for meeting rooms etc: although Cherry and Pevsner date it to 1978, the N part appears to be a later addition.

INTERIOR: The walls are plastered and whitened. There is a plain arch between the nave and the chancel: it has no capitals. The roofs to both nave and chancel are arch-braced. At the E end there are arcades of single, trefoiled blind arches to the sides: in the centre a series of quatrefoils mark the former position of the altar. The church is floored with red, buff, cream and black coloured tiles.

PRINCIPAL FIXTURES: In the SE corner of the nave there is a stone pulpit standing on a shaft: it is polygonal and has a blind arch with foliage capital shafts on each face. The font is octagonal and has shields round the bowl bearing foliage, the Agnus Dei and other motifs: the base has attached shafts. The nave seating has square bench-ends which have two-tiers of tracery in a well-proportioned design of pairs of cusped blind arches on each level. The E window of 1846 is by William Wailes of Newcastle upon Tyne.

HISTORY: Built in 1845-6 to serve the local community, the parish church at Ottery St Mary being over two miles distant. It is a fairly modest building but illustrates the move in the 1840s to the adoption of archaeologically accurate Gothic architecture under the influence of Pugin and the Cambridge Camden Society and its influential, local counterpart, the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society. Nothing appears to be known of the designer, a Mr Wollaston. The W extension has changed the external character of the building: it is described by Cherry and Pevsner as `unsympathetic' but it has provided the church with good ancillary facilities

SOURCES: Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Devon, 1989, p 900.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The church of St Michael, Ottery St Mary, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is of special interest as an archaeologically correct Gothic Revival church of the mid-1840s, taking up the new ideas about church-building that were prevalent after about 1840. * It has retained most of its early Victorian seating and other original features. It has stained glass by William Wailes, one of the leading manufacturers of the early Victorian stained glass revival.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

398328

Legacy System:

LBS

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