St Mary’s at Ottery is one of those buildings whose scale takes you by surprise. The twin transept towers, the long chancel and the broad, low body of the church give it a presence far beyond what you expect in a small East Devon town. The comparison with Exeter Cathedral is an old one, and not without reason: when the church was consecrated in 1260 the manor belonged to Rouen Cathedral, and the towers seem to have been built with Exeter firmly in mind. The cruciform plan and the generous proportions belong to that same ambition.
The church in its present form is largely the work of Bishop John Grandisson, who acquired the manor and advowson in 1335 and turned the church into a collegiate foundation two years later. Much of what we see — the nave of five bays, the unusually long chancel of six, the Lady Chapel and the vestry chapels — dates from this rebuilding. The style sits between Early English and Decorated, with a deliberate retention of lancet forms that gives parts of the building an older look than their date would suggest. The east window, with its eight lancets and ogee‑curved niches above, is typical of this mixture.
The photograph of the chancel shows the building before Herbert Read added the reredos in the 1930s. Without that later screen the east end appears clearer and more open, and the length of Grandisson’s chancel is easier to appreciate. The rib vaulting and the tall arcades run uninterrupted to the altar, and the whole space reads as a single medieval design rather than one divided by later fittings. It is a useful reminder of how little the underlying structure has changed since the fourteenth century.
The twin transept towers remain one of the church’s most distinctive features. They are unusual in an English parish church and give the building a slightly continental air. Whether Grandisson was echoing Exeter or simply asserting the collegiate status of his foundation, the effect is unmistakable. The symmetry of the towers anchors the whole building, and only the later Dorset Aisle breaks the original balance.
That aisle, added around 1520 by Cecily Bonville, Marchioness of Dorset, is famous for its fan vaulting. It is one of the finest examples outside a cathedral, with pendant bosses that draw the eye the moment you enter. It is also, in truth, a little at odds with the rest of the church: broader and heavier than the original north aisle, and giving the exterior a slightly uneven outline. Beautiful though it is, it sits on top of a structure that was already complete and harmonious in the fourteenth century.
Inside, the church retains a remarkable amount of medieval work. The painted nave ceiling, the misericords carved around 1350, the two Green Men, the sedilia, the altar screen and the wooden eagle lectern all survive from the medieval period. The astronomical clock, usually attributed to Grandisson, is one of the oldest mechanical clocks in the country and follows the old Ptolemaic scheme with the Earth at the centre. The tombs of Otho de Grandisson and his wife add to the sense of continuity with the bishop’s original foundation.
The nineteenth‑century restoration by William Butterfield altered floor levels in the transepts, crossing and western chancel to match the nave, and adapted the east end for parochial use rather than collegiate worship. His work was thorough but left the essential structure intact. The college buildings themselves did not survive the Dissolution in 1545, when collegiate foundations were suppressed along with the chantries they had come to serve.
St Mary’s is now a Grade I listed building and remains one of the most impressive parish churches in England. Its scale, its twin towers, its long chancel and its mixture of fourteenth‑ and sixteenth‑century work give it a character entirely its own. For a town of modest size it is an extraordinary building, and its survival in such complete form is one of the reasons Ottery feels so strongly shaped by its medieval past.
