Stoke Pero Church in

Stoke Pero Luccombe or Luckham is a village and civil parish in the Exmoor, Exmoor National Park in the England, English county of Somerset. It at the foot of the moor's highest hill, the Dunkery Beacon, and is about one mile south of the A39 road between ...

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

, England was built in the 13th century. It is a Grade II*

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

. Standing above sea level, it is the highest church on

Exmoor Exmoor () is loosely defined as an area of hilly open moorland in west Somerset and north Devon in South West England. It is named after the River Exe, the source of which is situated in the centre of the area, two miles north-west of Simons ...

History

The church has no known dedication to any saint, however an inscription on one of the three bells suggests it may have been dedicated to

Saint Barbara Saint Barbara (; ; ; ), known in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Great Martyr Barbara, was an Early Christianity, early Christian Greek saint and martyr. There is no reference to her in the authentic early Christian writings nor in the origin ...

. The tower dates from the 13th century. The rest of the church was largely rebuilt in 1897 by

Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, 12th Baronet Sir Charles Thomas Dyke Acland, 12th Baronet, DL, JP (16 July 1842 – 18 February 1919), of Killerton in Devon and of Holnicote in the parish of Selworthy in Somerset, was a large landowner and a British politician and Barrister-at-Law ...

. It is likely that there was a church on the site long before the 13th century. The list of rectors goes back to 1242. Occasional services are held at the church by the parish of

Porlock Porlock is a coastal village in Somerset, England, west of Minehead. At the 2011 census, the village had a population of 1,440. In 2017, Porlock had the highest percentage of elderly population in England, with over 40% being of pensionable ...

with Stoke Pero which is within the

Diocese of Bath and Wells The Diocese of Bath and Wells is a diocese in the Church of England Province of Canterbury in England. The diocese covers the county of Somerset and a small area of Dorset. The Episcopal seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells is located in the ...

Architecture

The stone building has slate roofs. It consists of a three-

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

and

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

with a porch to the north. The tower is supported by diagonal

buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient (typically Gothic) buildings, as a means of providing support to act ...

es and has a stair turret. It has no electricity supply and is lit by candles and warmed by fuel-stoves. Inside the church is a

baluster A baluster () is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its ...

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...

References

{{reflist Grade II* listed buildings in West Somerset Grade II* listed churches in Somerset

History

Architecture

See also

References