St Nectan

dedicated to St Nectan, the main fabric dates from the C14

Plan: Nave, chancel, north and south aisles, transept chapels and porches, west tower. the main style of the church is Perpendicular but the traceryof the windows has largely been replaced and the nave, chancel and tower at least are likely to be C14.

The date of aisles and north and southporches is more problemmatic and they are not necessarily contemporaneous but likely to have been built between the 2nd half of the C14

the later C15.

Very fine C15 rood screen extending the whole width of the Church, eleven bays long with Pevsner A-type tracery and rich foliage carving to coling, with evidence of ancient colouring throughout.

High quality benches with carved ends in south chapel which according to documentary evidence were originally installed in the Lady Chapel circa 1540 by Hugh Prust of Thorny.

Other pews largely C17 with some C19 restoration and all those in south transpet being C19.

Restored medieval pulpit on renewed stone base.

In the chamber over the north porch are the preserved panels of a Jacobean pulpit, a list of the allotments of seats in 1613 and pieces of medieval tiles and glass as well as the parish stocks.

Very fine late Norman font with square-base and bowl ornamented with intersecting arcading and a stem with cable mouldings separated by incised zig zags.

Carved heads at the corners.

All the glass is C19 or early C20, the east one designed by Christopher Webb, apart from one in the Lady Chapel which has 3 roundels of which the central one is C14 depicting the Virgin Mary.

Sited in the chancel is an ornate late C14 elaborately carved altar tomb of Catacleuse stone removed from Hartland Abbley in 1848.

Throughout the church are 60 mural monuments on walls and floors of which a few are of considerable interest.

On the north aisle wall are 2 particularly good wall memorials.

One has a segmental pediment over the slate plaque surmounted by heraldic shield with cherub at either side and with 2 Corintian columns below, in memory of John Velly, d. 1694.

Both memorials have ancient colouring.

In the south aisle is a smaller wooden memorial with Ionic columns to either side of a plaque surmounted by a heraldic shield and retaining its original colours.