A good and complete Gothic Revival church by Charles Hansom, architect of Plymouth Cathedral, perhaps somewhat old-fashioned for its date but with a lively external composition and a light and spacious interior with several furnishings of note. 

Weekly Mass at Teignmouth resumed in 1840 in The Jolly Sailor Inn, served by a priest from Ugbrooke. In 1854 a church dedicated to Our Lady and St Charles Borromeo was built from designs by Charles Hansom on land forming part of a tunnel over the line of the South Devon Railway Company. In the 1870s the company required the land for improvements to the line and the church was dismantled and rebuilt in Plymouth as the church of Holy Rosary (qv). The present church was built in 1878, also from designs by Charles Hansom of J. A. Hansom & Son. It was consecrated on 7 October 1937. The church was previously served by Redemptorists and Benedictines, but is now diocesan.

Description

See list description, below. The date given is incorrect, since it relates to the earlier church, dismantled in the 1870s and rebuilt in Plymouth. The pews, which appear to date from the 1920s or 1930s, were imported from a Baptist chapel. There has been some reordering in the sanctuary, where the rails have been removed. One curious feature of the building is that its floor slopes noticeably upwards from the entrance door to the altar.

List description

II

Roman Catholic church. 1854 by Charles Hansom. Squared rock-faced grey Plymouth stone with cream freestone dressings and belfry. STYLE: Middle Pointed. PLAN: Rectangular aisled plan. EXTERIOR: chamfered capping to the rock-faced plinth. The coped gable to the south front with a restored fretted cross, has a large circular window of 8 trefoiled circles surrounding a central circle with 8 daggers to the tracery. The coped gabled central porch has a pointed arch, with a large quatrefoil to the tympanum, over a flight of steps flanked by leaded lights to arcades of pointed arches on stepped plinths. To the south-east corner is a forward-facing off-set buttress crowned by a niche, gabled at eaves level, with a heavy square crocketed finial above. To the left of the porch is an octagonal tower to the belfry with leaded lancet windows. Each facet is gabled with trefoil-headed openings flanked by colonettes on a moulded plinth. The right return (east) has 4 gables each with a 2-light pointed-arched window and steeply weathered sills. A lower similar 5th bay toward the north end, possibly a vestry is probably later. In the angle of the south porch and the 1st gable is a canted set-back range with circular cinquefoil stained-glass windows to south and east and a hipped roof flattened at the eaves, to the nave. The north chancel end is a canted bay with a 3-light window to the north flanked by 2-light windows under a hipped roof with a wrought-iron finial. The left return (west) has clerestory windows and a low gabled block with a 3-light window to the left return. The presbytery attached to the rear left is similar in style with C20 additions. INTERIOR: 4 bays; a 5-sided apse with a lower Lady Chapel to the right and a sacristy to the left; a former baptistery to the right (south east) of the door; organ loft and gallery over door with stop-chamfered panelling and supporting posts. Round columns with chamfered pointed arches, with elaborate foliate capital to demi-column above pulpit. Octagonal pulpit with trefoil arches with carved capitals on marble columns and Symbols of the Evangelists. Font has quatrefoil bowl supported on marble columns with carved capitals. Reredos with crocketed niches and spirelet. The 5 facets of the 3-window apse are articulated by full-height colonettes. C19 and C20 stained glass.

(The Buildings of England: Pevsner N & Cherry B: Devon:London: 1989-: 797).

Listing NGR: SX9434673192

Heritage Details