Details
SY 3693 CHARMOUTH THE STREET,
SOUTH SIDE
8/34 Charmouth Parish Church
(St Andrew)
G.V. II
Parish Church. Entirely rebuilt 1836-8, by Charles Fowler, Gothic Revival
style. West Tower, Nave, north and south aisles, north porch, balancing
south vestry, chancel slightly projecting. Forest marble plinth, chert
rubble walls with "long-and-short style" stone dressings. Window dressings
of Beer stone. Boscastle slate roofs; nave has tiled ridge. West Tower:
3 stages with diagonal buttresses, set-offs and stopped with gablets.
Strings break over pointed doorheads. Circular moulded stone surround to
clock face and on each face of tower; long coupled-lancet bell-openings-
with straight-chamfered jambs and 'V'-grooves. 'Classical- style' cornice
with modillions and a 'Gothic' embattled parapet over. North elevation:
5 bays, divided by buttresses with set-offs. Tall lancets with returned
labels over. Modillion-cornice and plain parapet. North porch with pointed-
arch entrance, label over. Stone gable coping, corbelled out. Stone cross
at apex. Pitched slate roof is lower behind. 2 leaf door with thin muntins.
Chancel projects, c 3 feet only. Diagonal buttresses with gablet heads.
East end: triple lancet window with label. Clearstorey with pointed windows
to each bay. Interior: nave of 5 bays, continuous into chancel. Tall
octagonal columns with moulded capitals and 4-centred arches. Roof of
pseudo-hammer-beam design under a ceiling canted upwards. Arch-braces and
iron tie-rods between the ends of hammer-beams. Single clearstorey lancets.
Gallery across west end of church, carried on 2 iron columns and with a wood-
; panelled front. Aisle roofs, pentice with exposed rafters. Fittings: Pulpit,
1885 on brass plate, in C14 Italianate style. Stone and'marbled', octagonal.
Marbled columns carrying trefoil-headed arches with foliage capitals. Font,
presented 1884, marbled, octagonal in Perp. style with sunk quatrefoils to
panels. Altar retable, stone, in simplified C14 style with crocketed finials.
Carved gable stone, c C14, from pre-1503 church. Cross with an abbot (of
Forde) standing with back to it, tonsured with chasuble, alb and pastoral
staff. Memorial tablets, North wall chancel: to Anthony Ellesdon, Knight,
d. 13 November 1737, Classical column surround. South wall chancel: to
Edward Bragge, MA d. 1747 and Martha d. 1769, in a rococoesque scrolly
cartouche. Urn-tablet, North aisle, neo-Classical, to Julia wife of
Robert Spiller d 2nd May 1811. Stained Glass in C13/C14 style, given in
1860s and 1870s. East windows, Christ in Majesty, 1936. Organ, 1846, given
by John Bullen. Plain stone font, small bowl with octagonal necking and C20
stem. "RCHM, Dorset I", p 87 (1).
Listing NGR: SY3643493593
