Parracombe

Parracombe is a very small village near Lynton, in Devon, England. It is situated in the Heddon Valley, a fold of Exmoor, which rises to 1,575 ft. at the South East end of the parish. The parish is chiefly remarkable for its old church, which stands on the moor side high above the village. Just off the A39 in the Heddon , Parracombe has an ancient church dedicated to St. Petroc. Beautifully set, a short distance inland from Martinhoe, on the western edge of the glorious Exmoor forest, is the delightful village of Parracombe.

It was proposed to pull St Petrock's Church down in the 1870s, but an agitation, in which John Ruskin played a leading part, saved it from destruction. A new church was built down in the village in 1878, and the old church, which has a completely unspoiled Georgian interior, is now used only occasionally in summer. It is dedicated to St Petrock and is undoubtedly a very ancient foundation, but the present building is largely the result of an early 16th-century reconstruction. The chancel, however, was not rebuilt at this date, but is early 13th-century work; so, too, is the lower part of the small, square West Tower. The interior is plastered and whitewashed; everything is irregular and leans in different directions. There are 18th-century box-pews; an 18th-century screen with a wooden tympanum above it; a Georgian pulpit; and a number of early 16th-century benches also survive. At the back of the church is the old musicians' gallery. On the walls are the wooden hat- pegs of the Georgian church, and oval plaques inscribed with suitable texts, such as "Let all things be done decently and in order." There are mural tablets to the old yeoman family of Lock (1667–1803) who still farm in the parish. All the roofs are ceiled and whitewashed.

St Petrock's Church Parracombe

There are barrows on Parracombe Common, probably from the Bronze Age, and a number of other small earth-works dotted about the parish. Nearby Rowley Barton ("rough clearing") was a manor mentioned in the Domesday Book as were East and West Middleton. The village was once served by a halt on the Lynton & Barnstaple railway which runs close to the centre of the settlement. Parracombe is located at Grid reference SS66704490 Parracombe is a spacious village that has a mix-match of picturesque properties. Old stone cottages are interspersed along the valley that leads to the village, and in narrow lane that skirts round towards the church, houses and cottages tumble against each other as if for support. The River Heddon flows peacefully through the village, in summer this river is not much more than a trickle but in winter, when storms lash the moors, this gentle waterway quickly turns, to become a raging monster.

Wistlandpound Reservoir is close by, so too, is Exmoor Zoological Park and the NT property Arlington Court.

Christ Church Parracombe

Parracombe was self-supporting until recent times, having a mill which ground corn, a brewery, bakery and shoemaker. It now has a population of about 250 registered voters. The ecclesiastical parish of Parracombe is now part of the Lyn group of five parishes which is ministered to by the North Devon Coast Team. The Saxon church, St Petrock's, was taken under the control of the Redundant churches Fund (now renamed the churches Conservation Trust) in 1969. Only two services are held there each year but it is open to the public and is of considerable interest, as it still has the original late eighteenth century interior.

Parracombe has many other interesting features. On Parracombe Common near Woolhanger is a henge (a sacred site) dating from about 2,000 B.C. Bronze age relics are seen at Chapman Barrows and Holwell Barrow and in particular the Longstone, indicating the temperate climate at that time when the local population lived on the higher parts of Exmoor. As the climate deteriorated at the time of the Iron Age, the people moved into the valleys and in Norman times Holwell Castle was built. This is the Motte and Bailey which can be seen from the church porch on the opposite side of the valley. The timber built fortified castle, which would have been seen standing on the top of the Motte, has long since disappeared.

Parracombe used to be served by the Barnstaple to Lynton narrow-gauge railway, which opened in 1898 and closed in 1935. At the time of the Lynmouth flood disaster in 1952 the culvert through the abandoned railway embankment became blocked; the water built up behind it until it was breached causing a wall of water to sweep through the lower part of the village drowning one inhabitant and causing considerable damage. Building of Christ Church, Parracombe was started in September 1877 and it was sufficiently well advanced for the Consecration Service to be held in October 1878. There had been a church in Parracombe since Saxon times - St. Petrock's which still stands about half-a-mile to the east, in the part of the parish known as Churchtown.

By the 1870's St. Petrock's had become very dilapidated and a suggestion that it should be demolished to enable a new church to be built on the site, produced such a wave of protests throughout the country, led by John Ruskin (who offered £10 towards the cost of building a new church), that St. Petrock's still remains and this new church, dedicated to Christ, was built on part of the parish glebe land, nearer to the centre of the village.
Mainly due to the efforts of the Rector at that time the Rev. Peter Leakey M.A., to whom one of the stained glass windows is dedicated the sum of between £3,000 and £4,000 was raised to enable Christ Church to be built. It is in the Early Decorated style. Much of the coursed rubble stone was quarried locally from other parts of the parish glebe. The windows and strings are Ham-hill stone. The quoins and other chisel-dressed stonework, were taken from a quarry belonging to the late Sir Arthur Chichester Bart. The internal dressings are Corsham freestone. The organ was installed in 1935.

Christ Church Parracombe

Christ Church Parracombe

There are two churches in the village of Parracombe. The church in use today, Christ Church, built in 1878 to replace the St Petrock's church on the hill above the village which had been declared unsafe. Repairs have been done over the years to St Petrock's church but the interior remains as it would have been in the eighteenth century before the idea of Victorian church restoration came into anybody's head. In those days box pews helped to keep people warm and the services of morning and evening prayer were lead from the three-decker pulpit. The lowest seat was for the clerk whose responsibility it was to announce the psalms, lead the responses and answer Amen to the prayers. Above was the seat for the parson and higher still the pulpit. The singing, mainly of metrical psalms, was lead by singers and musicians who sat at the back of the church either in a gallery or in raised seating. At St Petrock's the box pews are raised in tiers at the back for the singers and you can see a hole cut in the pew for the bass viol player to wield his bow. A church of similar style is that of St Mary at Molland where the walls lean outwards at startling angles. Once again there are box pews, raised seating for the singers, a screen and tympanum and a wonderful three-decker pulpit with a trumpeting angel on the sounding board.

The Fox and Goose Parracombe

Parracombe

Parracombe (pop 310) is a village boasting an inn, shop and two churches. The ancient St Petrock's church is now redundant, but retains a perfectly preserved eighteenth-century interior. Evidence of one of the earliest signs of settlement on Exmoor is the earthen ring at Parracombe which is believed to be a Neolithic henge 5000-4000BCE. It is thought that Exmoor tin and copper attracted a large population in the Bronze Age. The many barrows in the area are mostly Bronze Age burial chambers dating back some 3,500 years and there is evidence of ruins of Bronze Age houses.

OS Grid Reference: SS6644

Contributed by: Peter Smythe, Jayne Browne, Pat Jenkins