Rising above the town with its tall pinnacled tower, the Parish Church of St Andrew is Cullompton’s most treasured building. It is Grade I listed on the National Heritage List for England (first listed in 1986), reflecting its exceptional architectural and historic importance.

The building and the tower

The nave and its north and south aisles may date from the first half of the 15th century. The great west tower was begun in 1539 and was still being built in 1545. The church is constructed of coursed red sandstone and breccia with dressings of Beerstone, the pale limestone quarried in east Devon. In 1849–51 the chancel was rebuilt and the church restored by the architect Edward Ashworth.

The Lane Aisle and John Lane

The church’s most celebrated feature is the Lane Aisle, the richly decorated outer south aisle. It was begun in 1526 — building was still in progress in 1552 — and was paid for by John Lane, a wealthy Cullompton clothier who wanted his success in the cloth trade remembered.

He got his wish. The outside of the aisle is carved with the tools and symbols of his fortune: cloth shears, the “figure-4” motif of a handframe set with teasels (used to raise the nap on woven cloth) and ships that carried the trade. The meaning of these carvings was long puzzled over by historians before being explained by the economic historian Professor Eleanora Carus-Wilson.

Inside the church

• A superb late-15th-century painted rood screen stretching across the church in eleven bays, its colouring renewed in 1850.
• The “Golgotha” — an extraordinary and rare survival kept at the back of the church. This carved beam, representing the rocky hill of Calvary, once formed the base of the great Rood, supporting the Cross and the figures of Mary and St John high above the screen. Very few such carvings survive anywhere in England.
• A fan-vaulted ceiling in the Lane Aisle, carved bench-ends and a west gallery — layers of craftsmanship spanning the medieval and later centuries.
• A 19th-century stained-glass window said to be associated with the celebrated Morris & Co. workshop, to a design by Edward Burne-Jones.

Architectural detail drawn from the building’s Historic England listing (entry 1306902).