Parish Church of St Mary, Uffculme

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is the parish church of Uffculme in Devon, a Grade II* listed building first named in a charter of 1136 and remarkable for two features above all: the longest and oldest rood screen in the county, and a tall broach spire of a kind rarely seen on Devon churches. A mixture of medieval and Victorian work, it stands at the heart of its village as both a place of worship and one of the great screen churches of the West Country.

A church is believed to have stood on the site since Saxon times, possibly founded by the monks of Glastonbury Abbey, though no trace of that first building survives. From the early fourteenth century the church was rebuilt by degrees into the Gothic style, beginning with the north nave aisle, chancel and tower; in the early fifteenth century the work continued with an eastward extension of the north aisle, the south nave aisle and the celebrated rood screen. Later centuries turned inward — the altar and reredos carvings date from the sixteenth century, and the fine pulpit, still in use, was made in 1715, when the nave and aisle roofs were also renewed.

The first half of the nineteenth century brought rebuilding on a scale not seen since the medieval campaigns. In 1828 the rood screen was extended by three bays to the north, and in 1843 the chancel roof and many furnishings, including the font, were renewed. Between 1846 and 1847 the architect John Hayward duplicated the south nave aisle, giving St Mary's the rare distinction of double aisles, and in 1849 he carried through a wider programme: the renewal of many windows, including the great four-light east window, and — most significantly — the rebuilding of the tower and spire at a cost of some £3,400, equivalent to around £375,000 today. Hayward reused medieval material from the old tower alongside new stone, and since the completion of his scheme the church has changed little. In 1928 the west gallery was partly dismantled and reordered into a tower screen incorporating its medieval carvings, and in 1981 the organ was moved to its present place in the north aisle. Disaster struck in November 1998, when a fire and powerful explosion at a nearby fireworks factory shattered windows across the village and caused more than £300,000 of damage to the church, harming the tower pinnacles, roofs, windows and organ.

Nikolaus Pevsner called St Mary's "externally, a striking church," and its chief glory is the spire. Rising to 120 feet and designed by Hayward, it is visible from the surrounding hills and, with the chimney of nearby Coldharbour Mill, forms the village's most conspicuous landmark. The broach form is rare in Devon. The church follows a traditional plan of west tower and spire, a nave with north and south aisles — the south side a rare double aisle — and north and south porches, built mostly of rubbled limestone under slate roofs. The five-bay north aisle is among the oldest parts of the building and retains some medieval glass, while the outer south aisle of 1847 is a faithful copy of its fifteenth-century neighbour, now the inner south aisle.

Inside, the great treasure is the rood screen between nave and chancel. Dating to the early fifteenth century and stretching sixty-seven feet across seventeen bays, it is the oldest and largest in Devon; the 1828 extension was carried out so skilfully that it is virtually indistinguishable from the medieval core. The screen keeps its original red and green paint and is enriched with elaborate ribbed vaulting, covings and cornices. The chancel is a vivid Victorian Gothic creation with a wagon roof painted red and studded with gilded bosses, a decorated stone reredos carved to Hayward's designs, and a piscina. Among the other fittings are the 1715 pulpit, a polygonal stone font of 1843 by Samuel Knight, and the brightly coloured, ornately carved tombs and busts of the Walrond Chapel, dating from between 1630 and 1790.

The church's ring of bells has grown over two centuries. Thomas Bilbie III of Cullompton recast an earlier five into a ring of six in 1801; Charles and George Mears of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry recast the treble and tenor in 1847; and in 1927 John Taylor & Co of Loughborough recast all six and added two more to make a ring of eight, hung in a new cast-iron frame. Considered among the finest in the West Country and overhauled in 2010, they are well used by visiting bands of ringers — a fitting voice for a church that joins Saxon foundation, a medieval masterpiece of a screen and a Devon-rare spire above the village of Uffculme.