Coffinswell

from

Some Old Devon Churches

By J. Stabb

London: Simpkin et al (1908-16)

Page 63

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.

COFFINSWELL. St. Bartholomew. The church consists of chancel and nave, without division (the waggon roof extending from the east end to the west), north aisle divided from the nave by four arches supported on columns with carved capitals, small south transept, north porch, and west tower with six bells; two of these are pre-Reformation bells and bear in Old English lettering the inscription:- Protege Virgo Pia quos Sancta Maria; two date from 1626 and 1637, and have the inscription:- Soli Deo detur Gloria; the latter was recast in 1894, when a fifth bell was added with the inscription:- Sit Deo gloria; the sixth bell was added in 1904.

There is a piscina in the south wall of the chancel, and a tablet to the memory of Thomas Patch and his wife Johanna, and their two sons, dated from 1706 to 1724. On the capital of the western pillar are four coats of arms of the Scobahull, Holbeme, Leyton, and Gambon families. The font [plate 63] is old with a circular bowl with a narrow border of carving round the top, and the rest of the bowl completely covered with carving, beneath the bowl there is cable moulding, the plain shaft rests on a square base. Over the porch is the inscription:- Thomas Street
Churchwarden
1729
W.T. 1768

In the vestry are preserved the old stocks, remarkable for the fact that the board with the holes for the feet is flat instead of upright, so that the prisoners would either have to stand in them, or sit in a very cramped position. The old parish chest is also kept here, and some pieces of lead with foot and hand marks on them. I believe at one time visitors to the roof used to amuse themselves by tracing the shape of their hands and feet on the lead covering, and when the rood was re-leaded these shapes were preserved.

The registers date: baptisms, 1560; marriages, 1560; burials, 1561.