St. Budeaux Church (1834)

G. P. Hearder
  • image IMAGEFORDA3445
RepositoryLibraryShelf
Devon West Country Studies sPER/SOU
Illustration Reference
SC1907
Location
CD 30 DVD 5
Publication Details
Date
1834
Publisher
Scope and Content
Hearder, G. & J. The South Devon Monthly Museum. Plymouth: October 1st, 1834. VOL. IV. No. 22. ST. BUDEAUX CHURCH.It occupies, with the churchyard and adjoining village green, the plateau of an eminence, which gradually rises from the very margin of the Tamar. A spot so exposed to the weather cannot be favourable to vegetation, and the attempts that have been made to plant the church-yard have failed, as I find by a memorandum in the register. Very recently the experiment has been repeated, but with no more than partial success; and the few fine old trees, which have outlived the storms of nearly a century, are recorded as the planting of the Trelawneys, of Budshead, once the chief family in the parish. Three fine ash, and a picturesque group of pines, remain a living and graceful monument of the planters, who themselves have long since mingled with the dust of this, their almost patrimonial cemetry. […..]There is little in the general appearance of St. Budeaux Church, and less perhaps in its detailed parts, to instruct the architect, or to delight the antiquary. It is an unpretending structure, with a nave and side aisles of equal length. We have documents, from which it would appear, that the erection took place soon after 1560, a period when the purer ages of Gothic architecture had passed away. It may, therefore, be said to belong to the Protestant era of church building, and has no traces of screen or roodloft, stoups, piscinae, sedilia, or other vestiges of Romanist worship. The lateral windows are mostly surrounded by rectangular dripstones; those in the eastern gables are pointed with the tracery most generally in use in the less ornamented structures of our ancestors; while the windows at the west end have three lights with plain semicircular heads. Many of the architectural members appear to have been transferred from another building of more ancient date, from their somewhat clumsy adaptation to their present situation; a circumstance far from improbable, since it is known, that the present edifice does not occupy the site of the original parish chapel, but was erected here as more convenient and central than the low, remote and almost insulated spot near the water side where the old chapel formerly stood.When a church is found in a situation so manifestly inconvenient as to excite general surprise, there is usually some legendary tale at hand to account for the anomaly. The materials deposited during the day, were mysteriously and perseveringly transported in the succeeding night to a spot so glaringly unsuitable, that the removal could not possibly be attributed to any other agency than to that of the enemy of all good. Such is the account which may, I presume, be met with in every part of the kingdom; but the truth, divested of its traditional garb, may generally be discovered in the fact, that great numbers of our rural districts were first provided with places of public worship by the lords of the soil. St. Budeaux (formerly Budock) chapel was in all probability, therefore, erected by the owner of Budockshed (Budock's hide), now by abbreviation Budshed; and this may account for the choice of its original site, near the proprietor's manor house. But, whether this hypothesis be correct or not, if the parish records, in speaking of the new church, mean an entirely new building (which is somewhat irreconcilable with other documents), the present structure was erected through the means, if not at the sole expense, of Roger Budocksbed, about 1563-4, and not by Robert, his ancestor, as stated by Risdon, and, after him, by Prince. A deed, bearing date 8th Eliz., is extant, in which this Roger grants the piece of land " wherein the church now standeth," as well as another piece adjoining the same (the site of the residence house); and also Agaton Green, close to the church-yard, -the latter as a parish sporting ground, for a term of 2000 years.Of Robert Budockshed, Prince, the county biographer, quaintly remarks, "see his fate, or rather the inscrutable event of Providence. This gentleman's own daughter was the first that handselled it, the place of her burial." As this Robert was born in 1360, I confess myself utterly unable to reconcile this statement with the incidental notices referring to the church as a newly-erected building in 1563-4. The only conjecture I can offer is, that an older chapel in the present site might have been so altered and enlarged about 1560, as to give rise to the appellation of new church; be this as it may, among the numerous monuments by which the interior of the church is adorned, none records the burial of a single individual of the Budshed or Budockshed family, the earliest being erected to one of the Gorges, to whom the property passed from the name of Budockshed. The whole interior of the church, though simple, is pleasing; and the lover of ancient ecclesiastical propriety will notice with pleasure the situation of the font, just within the great door. The font is properly inclosed with a railing, having panneling and a pediment at the back inscribed with appropriate texts of Scripture. A neat baptistery is thus formed in a style corresponding with the communion table and altar-piece. Both were the gift of the Rev. S. W. Gandy, late incumbent (now vicar of Kingston-on-Thames), the memorial of whose care for the seemly decorations of the church can scarcely be said to be preserved by the modest memento of his initials graven in the massive block of granite at the chuchyard gate.Contiguous to the churchyard, and within the sanctuary, as the ancient documents express it, is the residence house. In 1827, it was a mere cottage, containing only two rooms on the ground floor. It has been since enlarged and renovated, partly at the expense of the landowners and parishioners, and partly by the incumbent. The original building, which appears to have been co-eval with the church, has been preserved; and the modern additions have been made to correspond with the ancient architecture as nearly as circumstances would permit. The windows command the greater and more picturesque part of the scenery already described, while the Tamar, immediately in front, presents the appearance of a navigable lake) at least a mile in breadth and and from six to seven miles long; which, with its constant succession of barges, market boats, wherries, and small trading vessels, forms for the admirer of nature a picture " ever charming, ever new." [Text may be taken from a different source or edition than that listed as the source by Somers Cocks.]
Format
Wood engr
Dimensions
87x134mm
Aspects
Exterior
Counties
Subjects
Dates
1834