Listing Text

SS73NE EXMOOR CP

SIMONSBATH
11/12
Church of St Luke
6.4.59

II
-

Church. Circa 1856. Architect unknown. Dressed lias, render grooved as ashlar to left of porch, slate hung west end,
Ham stone dressings, stepped sill string course below windows, coved cornice, coped verges to chancel arch wall, slate
roofs. Plan: 3-bay nave, bell-cote, south porch, chancel, north-east vestry. Early English style. Slate hung gabled
bell-cote rising from central west end buttress pierced by 2 lancets, lower flanking butttresses with cement caps
linked by high plinth, single storey gabled porch, pointed arch opening reached by flight of 4 steps, trefoil lights on
returns, pointed arch inner doorway, double doors with decorative hinges, 2 paired lancets to nave, buttress, 3 lancets
to chancel, set back buttresses, east window of 3 lancets, lancet north wall of chancel, lean-to roofed vestry, 2
lancets east side, shouldered doorway north front, 3 paired lancets to nave. Interior: rendered. Pointed chancel arch.
Arched braced nave roof, collar beam to nave, in varnished pine as are all fittings and harmonium. The ecclesiastical
parish was created in 1856 out of the Royal Forest of Exmoor and the memoirs of the first vicar, the Rev W H Thornton,
'Reminiscences of An Old West Country Clergyman' tell of its early days. (Pevsner, Buildings of England South and West
Somerset, 1958).

Listing NGR: SS7757639429