St Leonard, Halwell

St Leonard's is a Grade I Church of England parish church in Halwell, South Hams, Devon, in the Diocese of Exeter.

Overview

Historic England records a late fifteenth-century parish church with some late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century reused material, restored and reroofed in 1896. The fabric is dressed local slate rubble; windows are mainly volcanic stone; roofs are slate with gabled ends. The plan is nave and chancel under one roof, a five-bay north aisle shorter than the nave, west tower, and north porch. A small late-nineteenth-century vestry sits in the angle of chancel and aisle. The south wall of the nave appears to have been rebuilt in the nineteenth century, reusing fifteenth-century windows. Reset medieval doorframes and the tower west window with intersecting tracery point to earlier fabric, possibly from after the 1288 returns that did not mention a church here.

Halwell was one of four Devon burhs in the tenth century. The church described in 1536 is the existing late fifteenth-century building. The rood screen was removed in 1810. The church became an independent parish at the beginning of the nineteenth century after attachment to Harberton.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1108275
• Three Rivers Mission Community