All Saints - East Budleigh

ALL SAINTS - EAST BUDLEIGH

Am I a geek? Sure, we all like to throw bricks at coppers and burn down the suburbs with a half-closed eye but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. As they say. So, in my more contemplative moments I sometimes like to stroll down to the beach and just sit and watch the waves roll in as the ships go by on the horizon. On other occasions I like to take a look at the local churches, not to pray or any such reckless if not ridiculous thing as that but to simply have a mooch around. They're beautiful, ancient, old buildings and I appreciate them – it's as simple as that. If you ask politely and there isn't a health and safety issue, it's surprising how easy it is to even get up to the top of the steeple and look out at the view. It's always worth it.

The church in the village of East Budleigh, in Devon, goes back to before 1420, so it's an old one. Developed and built up a bit since then, of course, there's a lot of history to it not least it being where Walter Raleigh used to go as a child due to his father being the churchwarden. Another famous churchwarden there was Ambrose Stapleton who during his tenure involved almost the whole of the village in smuggling, an activity that was once rife along the nearby coastline and which he apparently organised with great skill.

Within a secret drawer of a communion table, a collection of ancient books were once discovered including bibles dating back to 1634 and a Book of Martyrs describing trials and hideous punishments meted out in that same century to local parishioners.

On all of the bench ends there are wood carvings of various past residents of the village dating back again to the early sixteenth century, along with carvings of coats of arms and angels. There is also a carving of a native American Indian in full headdress. Why? What's he doing there?

Meanwhile out in the churchyard, for such an old church there are surprisingly very few tombstones there. This is simply due, however, to burying past graves under ten feet of mud and starting anew with fresh graves being dug into the newly created mound. Like a high-rise cemetery.

How do I know all this stuff, you might wonder? Well, I've just read the booklet entitled All Saints – East Budleigh, written by Lilian Sheppard, which is basically a guide to the church. Published in 1978, it's probably now long out of print and only available from the dusty bookshelves of second hand shops along the East Coast of Devon. Ignored and not given a second glance apart from people like me.

Am I a geek?

John Serpico