Churches of the British Isles

Exton Mission Hall, since lost, was on the north side of Station Road, between the present church and the village hall, and with the church itself about forty metres to the west of Exmouth Road. The mission hall is shown as such on the OS 25-inch map of 1892-1914. Later it was replaced by the present brick building which houses St Andrew's Church in Exton. Erected in 1962, this presumably was a direct replacement of the mission and an enhancement of its work.

Lympstone Primitive Methodist Chapel is on the north-west corner of Underhill and Chapel Road, to the immediate west of the railway embankment. It is shown as such on the OS 25-inch map of 1892-1914. Its Sunday school building is on its northern flank (to the right in this shot). At the Methodist union in 1932 it became Lympstone Methodist Church. The Sunday school became the church hall, and then the church itself, but was put up for sale in 2022.

Lympstone Unitarian Chapel (The Vault) was on the west flank of the Redwing public house (shown here), on the southern side of Church Road. No less than two Presbyterian places of worship existed here, the other being Gulliford Unitarian Chapel (see links). The local Presbyterian cause was formed in 1689, but Lympstone chapel was needed by 1819, in a position more central than the isolated first chapel. New chapels in Exmouth and Topsham made it redundant.

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish Church of Lympstone sits at the north-east corner of Church Road and School Hill. In the mid-1200s Reginald Albermarle provided horses and weapons for the king when hunting in Dartmoor. He also provided the initial impetus to construct this church. The Bonville family succeeded the Albermarles, and it was they who rebuilt the church in the 1300s. It was being rebuilt in 1329 when the dedication was postponed.

The three-stage tower shares similarities with that of St Swithun's in nearby Woodbury (see links), which can confidently be dated to 1407-1409. The chancel was lengthened by Burgess about 1830. In 1833 the church was restored and extended. It was re-consecrated in 1864 but was largely rebuilt (excluding tower, north arcade, and chancel arch) by Edward Ashworth in 1864-1867. Today it consists of coursed sandstone rubble with limestone banding to the south.

Photos on this page kindly contributed by Lazy South's Travels, Joseph Rogers, John Bailey, Tim Jenkinson, and Jeff Collman, all via the 'History Files: Churches of the British Isles' Flickr group, with extra information from A History of the Presbyterian and General Baptist Churches in the West of England, Jerom Murch (R Hunter, 1835).