Churston Ferrers, Devon
The church of St Mary the Virgin in Churston Ferrers was built in the late 14c / early 15c in the perpendicular style with squared Devonian limestone rubble with red sandstone quoins; the west wall and tower rendered..  
The name Churston derives from the Saxon Cyric-tun, the settlement by the cross, showing early associations with the arrival of Christianity. .  In 1303 Alice daughter of lord of the manor William Bozun married Hugo de Ferrers of Bere Ferrers, near Plymouth, and Ferrers was added to the village name .
The church was originally built alongside the manor house  (now Churston Court Hotel) as a private chapel for the Ferrers family    The doorway for the Lord to access the chapel still exists together with the Norman south porch and priest's room above. Here the visiting monk from Totnes could rest his head before continuing his journey on foot to St. Mary's, Brixham, via Monk's Bridge. The people of the village and Manor would never had entered the Lord's Chapel, but gathered round the village cross in sunshine or rain to be given Mass, in Latin, by the same monk.
In 1405 Joan Ferrers, heiress of Churston Ferrers, married Richard Yarde of Bradley Manor near Newton Abbot. The name of Yarde had come to Churston and was to remain here for the next 350 years,   However Gilbert Yarde, as Lord of the Manor,  was one of the first to personally live here and by his death in 1492 certainly the church and probably the Court also, had undergone major reconstruction. This is the period in which the present building began to take on its present identity,    At the time of his death or shortly before the chapel was given to the local parishioners as a perpetual curacy to St Mary's Higher Brixham.   It had its own churchwardens in the 17c &amp; in 1953 was described by the Archdeacon of Totnes as a 'parish by tradition'. 
In mid 17c the  Yarde loyalty to King Charles I. meant Edward Yarde paid dearly for that support, paying several hundred pounds as a fine to the New Commonwealth 
During 1763 the three centuries of Yarde family finally came 
to an end, yet the name Yarde was to continue, through marriage. Susanna, only child of Francis Yarde, to 17 year old Francis Buller.   Their son taking the name Yarde Buller.

The church consists of a chancel, nave, north and south aisles, south porch with parvise, and west tower with a clock &amp; 6 bells  - three dating pre 1553; the oldest c1440 by Richard Norton of Exeter, with arms of Ferrers. A fourth by Mordecai Cockey of Totnes, 1681.  The tower has never had a west door, probably because of its close proximity to the manor house .  However there is a blocked doorway (visible only on the interior wall) with a round arch at the west end of the south aisle where the family may have entered.  
Over the entrance to the porch is an old carving, much worn; showing the Crucifixion under a canopy with probably figures of BVM &amp; St John or St Mary Magdalene  <a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/1h8a7q2370">www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/1h8a7q2370</a>
 
The church was restored in 1865 /66 at a cost of £1,800, by E Ashworth of Exeter , with an added vestry to the east end of north chancel chapel.   At about the same time a fine rood screen with paintings was taken down.  ( ! ! ) . parts of which  have, with a good deal of added modern work, been made into a belfry screen.  <a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/MZvwAEeerb">www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/MZvwAEeerb</a> . The nave portion of the old screen consisted of three divisions of unusual size, each division about 5 feet wide and containing six tracery lights.   Some idea of the original screen can be obtained from the doors in this screen in the tower which formed the doors of the original screen;
The railed off old rood staircase is in a turret next to the north aisle chapel altar <a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/FF5e985Mm9">www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/FF5e985Mm9</a>

The nave is divided from the aisles by five arches, the capitals of the piers have good carving; one at the west end is carved with mythological animals, and one at the east end bears the arms of the Yarde family. 
There is a hagioscope from the south aisle to the chancel
In the splay of the westernmost window in the south aisle is also  a quatrefoiled squint which enabled the priest to see the altar from the porch parvise.   <a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/1i6X53m2o7">www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/1i6X53m2o7</a>

Beneath the east window of the south aisle, surmounted by the arms of the Yarde Buller Barons Churston, in bronze, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/91E5AMi547">www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/91E5AMi547</a> is an alabaster panel, running along the whole length of the east wall, inscribed to the memory of Gyles Yelverton Yarde Buller 1875 - 1900  second son of John 2nd Baron Churston and Barbara his wife&quot; with space for more family members. 

There is a piscina with shelf in the chancel, and there are some remains of 14c &amp; 15c glass . 

Some old carved bench-ends remain in the east end, and the arms of Queen Anne [r. 1702-1714]  are over the south door  <a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/tNv5e73144">www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/tNv5e73144</a>

The registers date from 1590.
Baptised here In 1539, was Humphrey Gilbert destined to sail to Newfoundland in 1583 and take possession of the island in the name of his Queen, Elizabeth I. 

Monuments include one in the south aisle to William Farquharson (d.1813), a retired civil servant of East India Company; with a white marble mourning female figure and urn under a Gothic arch. 

Crime novelist, Agatha Christie, attended the church regularly when she lived nearby.   In 1956 she donated the royalties from one of her books to pay for the chancel east stained glass window showing Christ as the Good Shepherd, which was designed by Bideford artist, James Patterson.  <a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/zh0f173y13">www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/zh0f173y13</a>

<a href="https://churstoncourt.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Churston-Manor-History.pdf" rel="noreferrer nofollow">churstoncourt.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Churston-Man...</a>
Picture with thanks - copyright Lewis Clarke CCL <a href="https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6672555" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6672555</a>
churston ferrers churstonferrers church devon