St Martin's Church in Cathedral Close,

Exeter Exeter ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and the county town of Devon in South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter w ...

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

, England was built in the 15th century. It is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, ...

as a designated Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

, and is now a

redundant church A redundant church, now referred to as a closed church, is a church building that is no longer used for Christian worship. The term most frequently refers to former Anglican churches in the United Kingdom, but may also be used for disused churche ...

in the care of the

Churches Conservation Trust The Churches Conservation Trust is a registered charity whose purpose is to protect historic churches at risk in England. The charity cares for over 350 churches of architectural, cultural and historic significance, which have been transferred in ...

. It was

vested In law, vesting is the point in time when the rights and interests arising from legal ownership of a property are acquired by some Legal person, person. Vesting creates an immediately secured right of present or future deployment. One has a vest ...

in the Trust on 1 August 1995. It is built of

Heavitree Heavitree is a historic village and former civil parish situated formerly outside the walls of the City of Exeter in Devon, England, and is today an eastern district of that city. It was formerly the first significant village outside the city o ...

stone and has

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

roofs. The

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

arch is thought to be the oldest part of the building, and may date from the previous church on the site which was consecrated on 6 July 1065 by Bishop Leofric. There are traces of

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

long-and-short work high in the north-east corner of the nave. The tower was added in 1675. The interior contains 17th and 18th century monuments,

reredos A reredos ( , , ) is a large altarpiece, a screen, or decoration placed behind the altar in a Church (building), church. It often includes religious images. The term ''reredos'' may also be used for similar structures, if elaborate, in secular a ...

and

altar An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religion, religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, Church (building), churches, and other places of worship. They are use ...

rails, some of which were brought from the nearby St Paul's, which was demolished in 1936. The south window contains a few fragments of medieval glass. At the west end is a panelled gallery with the painted arms of Bishop Trelawny (1688—1707) and the City of Exeter, both flanking the royal coat of arms.

See also

References

Further reading