Church Heritage Record 615287

Nave, four-bay S aisle, SW tower incorporating porch, SE chapel, chancel, NE vestry.

The Archaeology Data Service does not record any significant finds in the vicinity of Christ Church. The area was farmland until the late nineteenth-century. No burials on site. The archaeological potential of the site is likely to be low.

Built in 1868 to serve the rapidly expanding suburbs of Torquay, contemporary with Babbacombe All Saints, Torquay St John and Torquay St Luke (see ‘Other churches nearby’, below). The Ellacombe Book: A Portrait of a Torquay Parish, by Sidney R. Langmead (see references) contains a detailed history of the church.

Trees include holly, mountain ash, evergreen oak, ash, laurel. No known TPOs.

The S side of the building, the most prominent, consists of the south aisle with a lean-to roof and two-light Geometric Decorated-style traceried windows with weathered buttresses between. To the SW, a three-stage tower, square on plan to the bottom stage with a south-east stair turret with lancet windows and weathered buttresses. The moulded SW doorway has stiff-leaf capitals to the responds, a gabled hoodmould topped with a cross finial, and a two-light boarded door with good ironwork. Above, three lancet windows. The belfry stage has canted corners, with louvred lancet windows, and a corbelled stone batter decorated with gablets, below tall lucarnes on all eight sides. Above, a stone spire with decorated bands, topped with a weathervane.

The W façade contains a five-light Geometric decorated W window: above the five lancets, roundels arranged in cinquefoil and octofoil patterns each contain a trefoil. The W window is framed by a decorated band with dentil decoration and a hoodmould with foliate stops. Above, another decorated band and a single lanced in the apex of the gable. Below the W window, a string course, and a central weathered buttress containing a date stone (August 9, 1867) inscribed “All things come of thee, & of thine own have we given thee. 1st Chron. 29.14.”

There is an angle buttress at the NW corner. The NW door has a pointed hoodmould with a triangular tympanum above with a further hoodmould topped with a fleur-de-lis. The N side of the church has two-light Geometric Decorated-style traceried windows with weathered buttresses between. To the NE, there are steps down to a boiler house, surrounded by low, coped stone walls; then a porch with a cusped lancet window to W, a three-centred stone doorway to N with two steps up, and a stone parapet. The vestry projects to the E, containing a two-light Geometrical window with hood mould to N. The vestry extension then steps back, containing another three-centred doorway with hoodmould to the NE.

The chancel, in snecked ashlar, has moulded string courses, angle buttresses and a central buttress in the east wall, and a five-light Geometric Decorated traceried east window, less complex than the W. The chancel roof is lower than that of the nave; in the apex of E wall of nave are two lancets. The south-east chapel, also in snecked ashlar, has diagonal buttresses, a parapet, hipped roof and trefoil-headed one-light windows, one to the S and two to the E.

The nave has a remarkably fine exposed roof construction. The main trusses are arch-braced with queen posts above the tie supporting a scissor-braced apex with braces from the queen posts both to the purlins and principal rafters. Intermediate trusses are also arch-braced with king posts. All trusses spring from stone corbels.

Much of the nave is filled with pews fixed to suspended wooden floors to pew areas. There is herringbone woodblock flooring to the aisles. Unusual slender cast-iron columns divide the nave from the S aisle, of quatrefoil section with wrought-iron capitals below an iron plate that supports the thick chamfered arches. The S aisle roof is open with aisle half trusses and exposed rafters, with plaster infills between rafters. The columns and capitals, together with other details such as hood moulds and corbels, are coloured blue and gold.

The moulded chancel arch features text in Lombardic script reading “God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” Around it, a hood mould with foliate stops. The chancel arch is flanked by lower arches, one N and two S. The chancel is divided from the nave by low stone walls, with which the pulpit is integral. There is a step up to the chancel, which is floored with basket-pattern wood-block. The chancel ceiling is oak-boarded with decorated ribs and bosses. There are three marble steps from the chancel to the high alar, and a mosaic floor to the sanctuary, grey with patterned borders; the sanctuary also has marble skirting. On the S side of the sanctuary, are sedilia and a piscine, arched with cusped tracery and pendants. On the N side, a pointed doorway leads to the vestry. Beneath the E window is a string course, continued at a lower level on the N and S sides of the sanctuary.

The chancel has 2-bay arcades into the side chapels with cylindrical columns and moulded arches. On the S side, a former organ chamber, converted in the 1960s to become the chapel of Christ the Healer – now a storage space. On the N side, there is a storage space, with a doorway leading to the vestry.

At the W end is a gallery, with an elaborate Gothic front incorporating a clock, now occupied by the organ. It is subdivided beneath by a glazed partition, housing (N to S) a choir vestry with kitchen, a community room, and S (tower) porch. From the porch, a pointed doorway opens on to a stone stairwell leading up to the gallery and ringing-chamber.