St Paul de Leon
Rood – Photograph (PWDRO 116/109) Guide (Staverton, undated); 1941
There is an unmarked photograph in a group of unknown churches in PWDRO 116/109 that was identified as being of the interior of Staverton, showing the screen and rood and the chancel beyond. The screen there was much restored 1889-91 by the architect Frederick Bligh Bond, who engaged Harry Hems of Exeter to carry out the work and to add a loft (Bond & Camm, 1909). It was not until 1941 that a rood was commissioned from ‘Miss Violet Pinwill, the celebrated wood carver’ (Staverton, undated). The rood is dedicated to the memory of Katherine Gladys Drake-Brockman, wife of the vicar, who died in May 1940 and bears an inscription in latin on the back. However, the vicar did not at the time apply for a faculty and it was not until March 1944 that permission was retrospectively granted for a rood ‘to replace that which was destroyed in the time of Queen Elizabeth’ (DHC DEX/9/a/3/1944/25).
Altar Panels – Photograph (PWDRO 116/42); 1948
The guide (Staverton, undated) states that a new high altar was installed in 1948, replacing a nineteenth-century one, and that Violet Pinwill supplied three carved and painted panels for the front. A plaque in the church records that the altar was built of oak with carved walnut panels. The design was by the vicar, the Revd E.D. Drake-Brockman, based on that of the Jacobean stall used as a lectern, with three arches symbolic of the Trinity.
Sources
Bond, F. B. & Camm, D. B. (1909) Roodscreens and Roodlofts. Pitman & Sons, London.
DHC DEX/9/a/3/1944/25 Faculty. Staverton. Rood.
PWDRO 116/42 Photograph. Staverton. Altar Panels.
PWDRO 116/109 Photographs. Various. Church Interiors.
Staverton (undated) Unpublished guide within church.