Brushford

from

Some Old Devon Churches

By J. Stabb

London: Simpkin et al (1908-16)

Page 39

Transcribed and edited by Dr Roger Peters

Full text available at

https://www.wissensdrang.com/dstabb.htm

Prepared by Michael Steer

Between 1908 and 1916, John Stabb, an ecclesiologist and photographer who lived in Torquay, published three volumes of Some Old Devon Churches and one of Devon Church Antiquities. A projected second volume of the latter, regarded by Stabb himself as a complement to the former, did not materialize because of his untimely death on August 2nd 1917, aged 52. Collectively, Stabb's four volumes present descriptions of 261 Devon churches and their antiquities.

BRUSHFORD. St. Mary. The church is very small, consisting of chancel, nave, south porch, and west tower, surmounted by a wooden spire, containing three bells.

The rood screen [plate 39] was probably erected either in the reign of Henry VIII [1509-1547] or that of Queen Mary [1553-58]. It was never intended for a rood loft, the pedestals which formerly supported the rood and figures still remain on the face of the screen over the central doorway. The lights consist of rectangular openings, with moulded shafts, the heads being filled with tracery of two kinds, the larger forming the framework, and the smaller fine fretwork filling of the same type. A great deal of the finer work has been broken away, but enough remains to show what the screen must have been like when it was perfect. It is unique among Devonshire screens, but there is said to be one very similar in Brittany, in the Church of St. Fiacre, Le Faouet.

There are several tablets to the Luxton family, by whom the church was restored in 1878.

The registers date: baptisms, 1695; marriages, 1697; burials, 1694.