St Andrew’s is a textbook example of a prosperous late‑medieval Devon parish church, built in granite and entirely comfortable with its own solidity. The tower, with its battlements and four pinnacles, is exactly the sort of confident perpendicular work you expect from a community that had wool money to spend and every intention of showing it. Nothing about the exterior feels tentative; it’s a building that has been sure of itself since about 1450.
The porch sets the tone. A proper two‑storey structure with a parvise above, it leads into an interior that is far lighter and more open than the granite might suggest. The nave runs wide, with four‑bay arcades on each side. The north arcade is granite, the south in Cornish polyphant — a small but telling reminder that medieval builders used whatever good stone they could get their hands on. The wagon roofs are classic Westcountry work, richly carved and still crisp despite the centuries.
The Norman font is the only visible survivor of an earlier church, a simple Purbeck marble bowl dating from around 1100. Everything else belongs to the great fifteenth‑century rebuild, though the Victorians inevitably had their say. In 1899 Fellowes‑Prynne raised the chancel floor, added the parclose chapel and vestry, replaced roofs, straightened leaning piers, and installed new granite tracery in the south aisle. He also removed the west gallery and box pews, replacing them with the distinctive green‑stained chairs and dado made from recycled pew panels — a colour scheme that seems to have been something of a personal trademark.
The rood screen was taken down in 1831, but enough fragments survived for Herbert Read of Exeter to reconstruct a section in 1923, now in the south aisle. The rood loft stair and doorway remain in the north aisle, and the ceilure above the former rood still hangs over the chancel arch. These survivals give a clearer sense of the pre‑Reformation interior than many churches manage.
There is stained glass of several periods. The east window contains two coats of arms: one probably of Edward of Lancaster, Prince of Wales, a rare survival and a reminder of the Courtenays’ Lancastrian loyalties; the other of King’s College, Cambridge, who became Lords of the Manor in 1570. In the Lady Chapel, fragments of medieval glass survive — a plough, part of a Madonna, and some Renaissance borders — small but evocative pieces that anchor the building firmly in its medieval past.
The roof bosses are unusually good. P.J. Cave’s 1948 study of medieval bosses included six from this church — a distinction normally reserved for cathedrals. Among them are a bearded head, a Green Man, the Three Hares, a sow and piglets, a queen’s head, a king’s head, and the Courtenay arms. The chancel wall plate also carries a remarkable carving of the Dragon of Eternity, its vine‑tail looping around the walls and back into its own mouth.
The fittings are a mixture of periods. The mahogany pulpit, probably the “new pulpit” ordered in 1831, was restored on an oak base during the 1899 works. Gravestones were reused as paving slabs — one half in front of the rector’s pew, the other half in the north aisle — a practical Victorian habit that now adds a slightly eccentric charm. The organ, built by Cartwright & Son in 1923, sits neatly in the south aisle chapel.
The tower holds six bells, originally cast in 1770 by Pennington and rehung several times, most recently by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 2009. When not in use, the ropes are gathered in a cradle forged from horseshoes — a small detail, but a pleasing one. The lychgate, built in 1901 to commemorate Queen Victoria, completes the ensemble.
