The Church of Ottery St. Mary

On 15th December 1337, King Edward III gave a Royal Licence to found a collegiate church at Ottery St.Mary, a small countryside town twelve miles east of Exeter. The college consisted of eight canons, eight priest vicars, the parish priest, the morn priest, Our Lady's chaplain, eight clerks, two church clerks, two holy water clerks, eight chorister boys and a master of grammar. One of the most impressive mediaeval churches in the county of Devon, UK, the church is modeled on Exeter cathedral and was completed about 1342. In a paper read before the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society on 11th September 1851, John Duke Coleridge described the church as 'almost unsurpassed among other churches of its size, for the majestic austerity of its design'. Coleridge later became Baron Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice of England.

Architecture

The side aisles of the chancel and the lower two-thirds of the transeptal towers are examples of Early English style Gothic (12th century) architecture. The nave, chancel, Lady Chapel, altar screen and vestries are examples of Decorated style Gothic (13th century) architecture. The north or "Dorset" aisle was added in 1520 and with the north and south porches is an example of Perpendicular style Gothic architecture.

The church had been designed so that worship by laity and canons took place in separate sections. However, the choir screen which separated the nave from the chancel was removed early in the nineteenth century. As part of his extensive restoration work started 21st May 1849, William Butterfield, completed the process of opening out the building into one parochial church. William Butterfield went onto build the Chapel of Balliol college Oxfordin 1856 and Keble College in 1876. In 1919 the plaster covering walls throughout the church was removed to reveal the original stonework in all it's beauty.

The South Porch

The south porch that would have originally led into the college cloisters appears to have been added about the same time as the Dorset aisle; Tudor roses and Staffordshire knots form part of the porch's decoration.

The North Porch

The north porch was the parishioners' main entrance to the church. It is finer in design than its southern counterpart. Above a large Stafford knot, a much weathered Stafford Arms is carved in the richly moulded arched entrance.

The North Transept

The transceptal towers were copied directly from those of Exeter Cathedral; in the whole of the UK, only the Church of Ottery St. Mary and Exeter Cathedral have transcepts formed by towers. Before the dissolution of the college, four bells hung in the tower of the north tansept. Their ropes passed through the mouths of the grotesque faces in the richly decorated ceiling. Mediaeval craftsmen depicted evil spirits and demons as performing servile tasks because they were thought to lurk in the shadows of the church seeking to corrupt and destroy.

Vicars

In 1760 Reverend John Coleridge arrived in Ottery and after being the Master of the King's School for a while also became vicar of the church until his death in 1781. The parish record contains an entry recording the baptism of his youngest child, the poet and philosopher, Samuel.

References

The Church of St. Mary of Ottery in the County of Devon

John A Whitham

The British Publishing Company Limited Gloucester, UK

Available at the church cost: 1-00 pound