St Pancras, Pennycross

Chancel Screen – Photograph (PWDRO 244/5); 1907

A photograph annotated ‘Chancel Screen Pennycross Ch’ appears in the album presented by Violet Pinwill to chief carver Hubert Minchinton on his retirement in the early 1950s (Kitty Green, granddaughter, pers. comm.). The same photograph in an album at PWDRO is labelled ‘Penny com quick Ch’ but this appears to be misleading. The screen is dedicated to Laura Elizabeth Hawker who died in 1906 and lived at Burleigh, near Pennycross Church (The National Archives, Census Plymouth 1901). A faculty was obtained for the installation of a chancel screen at St Pancras in 1907 (PWDRO 593/66), the petition for which included a plan by Edmund H. Sedding (DHC DEX/9/a/2/PlymouthStPancras/7). However, the screen is no longer in the church; it was said to have been removed during reordering and taken to a church in North Devon (C. McGowan, churchwarden, pers. comm.). It was later discovered to be in St Mary’s at Uffculme, installed in 1986 as a parclose screen (Cherry & Pevsner, 2004).

Sources

Cherry, B. & Pevsner, N. (2004) The Buildings of England. Devon. Yale University Press, London.

DHC DEX/9/a/2/PlymouthStPancras/7 Faculty. Plymouth St Pancras. Chancel Screen.

PWDRO 244/5 Photograph Album. Various. Woodcarvings.

PWDRO 593/66 Faculty. Plymouth St Pancras. Chancel Screen.

The National Archives, Census Plymouth 1901. RG13/2094 Folio 139b accessed at www.thegenealogist.co.uk.