Churches of the British Isles

Otterton Chapel is the third building in a vertical row on the north side of Fore Street, facing the village green to the west, with the Church Hill junction facing them to the south. Methodists turned down a rented cottage to the north as it forbade religious worship, but opened this chapel in 1894 as Quail House Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, on part of the medieval Otterton Fair site (last held in 1884). It closed in the 1960s, being the private 'Chapel House' from the 1980s.

Holy Trinity Old Church, Bicton, sits on the western flank of its replacement, St Mary's Church (see below). All that now remains of the old church is a small tower and some graceful, but ruined, window tracery of fifteenth century work. A mausoleum is located at the south corner, constructed and decorated by Nicholas Pugin at the time of the church's demolition. That partial demolition to create a 'planned ruin' took place after the church's replacement opened in 1850.

St Mary's Church, Bicton, is to be found on the western side of the B3178 road, a little under two hundred metres to the south-west of the main entrance to Bicton Park Botanical Gardens which lies opposite Bicton Farm. This Victorian church was erected at about the same time as the old church behind it (see above) was deliberately ruined in 1850, all to create a planned mausoleum for the husband of Lady Rolle who also funded the building of the new church.

The new, cruciform church uses snecked grey limestone and larger ashlar block, with faint rustication on quoins and buttresses. Details are in hamstone ashlar and the interior employs Caen stone ashlar details. The roof uses scallop-shaped red tiles with fleur-de-lys crested ridge tiles. The nave is taller than the chancel and transepts. The old church had existed since before Domesday book in 1080, although it seems to have been rebuilt in the Early English style in the 1400s.

Kingston Plymouth Brethren Chapel (Colaton Raleigh) on the south side of the Hawkerland road is roughly one hundred and forty metres north-west of Kitts Hayes house on the corner, with its wall-inset post box. The chapel is shown on the OS 1892-1914 map. It seems to have fallen out of use around the time of the Second World War, or right after, and was later converted (perhaps rather heavily) into 'Burnside'. A burial ground lay behind the chapel, now a garden.

Photos on this page kindly contributed by Peter Sellek, Alison Day (two), and Richard Peat, all via the 'History Files: Churches of the British Isles' Flickr group, one photo copyright © Lewis Clark via Geograph, reused under a cc licence, and one photo copyright © Gerald Millington via the Otterton Devon website, and reused with permission.