The parish church of St Michael at Doddiscombsleigh is one of the hidden jewels of the Teign Valley. Though substantially rebuilt in the late 1870s by the Exeter architect Edward Ashworth, who reopened it in 1879, the church preserves within its walls some of the most important medieval stained glass in Devon, second only to Exeter Cathedral. Its Grade I listing reflects not only the quality of its Perpendicular architecture but also the survival of rare fittings and glass that connect this small village to the wider story of late medieval England.
The exterior is a mixture of medieval and Victorian work. The three-stage west tower, built of granite rubble with battlements and obelisk pinnacles, has an idiosyncratic character, with buttresses placed unusually at the centre of its north and south faces. The south porch, largely rebuilt in the nineteenth century, retains its medieval form with a double-chamfered doorway and a trefoil-headed niche above the entrance. Around the church, Perpendicular windows — many renewed in the 1870s — light the nave, chancel, and north aisle, while polychromatic masonry details mark the Victorian rebuilding.
Inside, the church is light and spacious, its plastered walls and timber roofs giving warmth to the stone arcades. The five-bay Beerstone arcade, with its moulded arches and carved foliage capitals, is a fine example of Perpendicular craftsmanship. The nave roof, renewed in the 1870s, is decorated with carved bosses, while the north aisle retains a fifteenth-century keeled boarded wagon roof. The fittings are varied: a cut-down eighteenth-century timber pulpit, a Perpendicular font with foliage carving and a later traceried cover, and a set of sixteenth-century bench ends with blind tracery and quatrefoils, some adapted to later seating.
The glory of Doddiscombsleigh, however, is its stained glass. The north aisle contains the most complete scheme of late fifteenth-century glass in Devon outside the Cathedral, attributed to the so-called Doddiscombsleigh atelier, probably based in Exeter. The surviving panels include heraldry and fragments of text, thought to commemorate a Chudleigh Dodscombe marriage, linking the church to the local gentry. The south side windows, restored by Clayton and Bell in the nineteenth century, include the remarkable Seven Sacraments window. Here, a central figure of Christ, supplied by Clayton and Bell, is linked by stylised streams of blood to vivid scenes of baptism, marriage, confession, and the other sacraments, depicted with lively domestic and costume detail. It is one of the most iconographically interesting windows in the county.
Other glass enriches the building: a 1912 east window by Morris Drake, two further chancel windows probably by Frederick Drake, and restored panels by Clayton and Bell. Together they form a dialogue between medieval and Victorian artistry, each generation adding its own layer of devotion and commemoration. A wall monument to John Bibb, who died in 1647, adds a further note of continuity, linking the parish to its seventeenth-century past.
St Michael’s is thus more than a village church. It is a repository of medieval glass-painting, a showcase of Perpendicular architecture, and a witness to centuries of parish life. To step inside is to encounter a rare survival of late medieval colour and imagery, preserved in a quiet valley where history and faith continue to meet.
