Details
SOWTON SOWTON LANE (west side)
SX 99 SE
1/53 Parish Church of St Michael
and All Angels
I
Parish church. Early C16 arcade, otherwise all of 1844-5 by John Hayward. Coursed red sandstone with Beer stone dressing; fishscale slate roof, with heavy coping to gable walls, with crosses at apexes. Early Perpendicular in style. West tower, nave, south porch, north aisle, chancel, north-east vestry.
Exterior: West tower of 3 stages and plinth. Battlemented with corner pinnacles(now partially dismantled), with a stringcourse with gargoyles below the parapet.
Angle buttresses with set-offs; south-west angle staircase with half-pyramidal
roof, buttressed, and lit by small quatrefoil panels. 2-light pointed belfry
openings. Trefoil headed lancets to all sides light bellringing chamber. Canopied statue in niche to south. 3-light west window. West door with plinth raised to act as hood mould. South side, 5 bays including the porch; 2-light windows divided by buttresses with set offs. Chancel, with 2 lancets divided by similar buttress; priest's door. Diagonal buttresses at east angles; 3-light east window. North-east vestry, separately roofed with prominent stack. 5 bays to north side of aisle, as south, but with no porch.
Interior: early-C16 5-bay arcade, the west bay much narrower than the others; deep moulding to piers, and capitals with roses and shield-bearing angels, some of these very primitive in execution. All the rest is Hayward's. Open wagon roofs throughout, those to the nave and aisle possibly retaining some medieval bosses, and part of a wall plate. Complete set of 1840s bench ends, traceried with a variety of motifs in cusped roundels. Stone polygonal font, quatrefoil panels with pinnacled font cover. Pulpit, stone, polygonal, the stiles with finialed pinnacles, the panel with finialed canopies containing saints, all carved by John Thomas (who also carved the figure of St Michael in the tower niche). The chancel is notable for its intactness, and the quality of its fittings. Stencilled wall decorations, painted roof members, all over floor tiles, decorative tiles also to the risers of the sanctuary steps, and to the east wall up to the level of the altar table (which is also contemporary); commandment panels (painted on porcelain) with stone surrounds, pinnacled, finialed and crocketed. Sanctuary rails. The wall spaces of the chancel are enlivened by the deeply recessed window arches, and (to the south) the sequence of south windows, priests door and the double sedilia, heavily cusped with foliated decoration to the spandrels.
Historical note: John Hayward, the architect of Sowton, the rebuilding of which
was financed by the High Church Garrett family of Bishop's Court (q.v.) was for a
short time the leading exponent of ecclesiologically correct Gothic. His church at Gruick brought praise from the Ecclesiologist, and for a short period Hayward was their favourite son, until displaced by Butterfield. Sowton church is an early Ecclesiological church cf. Scott's early Puginian essay St Giles, Camberwell of 1842 which was also praised by the Ecclesiologist as adhering to the true principles of ecclesiology - and is remarkably intact, with a full complement of fine fittings and a well-preserved decorative scheme to the chancel. The stone sculptor at work here - John Thomas (1813-62) - so impressed the architect Sir Charles Barry that he was engaged to superintend the stone carving of the Houses of Parliament.
References : Devon C19 Churches Project ; R Gunnis, Dictionary of British
Sculptors, 1660-1851 (revised ed.in.d), pp.388-9.
Listing NGR: SX9758792514
