Somerset Churches : recording and
reporting on the churches and chapels of Somerset
St Peter's Church Huish Champflower
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The Church of St Peter in Huish Champflower, north-west of the town of Wiveliscombe, in the Brendon Hills, has some interesting features including the tower with diagonal buttresses; north arcade; what looks like a 15th century oak eagle lecturn (with later 19th Century wings); some fragments of early stained glass; and an early Georgian communion rail. |
Access to this church is though not a simple matter. After visiting several times at different times, on different days, over many months, and finding the church locked solid on every occasion, we finally gained entry to the inside of the church by knocking on the door of a nearby house. The occupant handing us the key and telling us to lock up and push the key back through the letter box when we had had a look around. All seemed straightforward. However, as we got to the church door, large key in hand, we were subjected to a less-than-friendly second 'welcome' - "I am the churchwarden, what do you want?". Behind us stood a stern-looking middle aged woman and someone I took to be her husband. An utterly bizarre tone and attitude, not least since we had a toddler with us, church key in one hand, and a large camera in the other. There then followed a veritable inquisition. Anyway, to cut a lengthy and frankly laughable story short, the people currently in charge of access to Huish Champflower Church are not at all welcoming of visitors. Sadly the dust-covered church visitors' book testifies to the very few visitors who have managed to get inside of St. Peter's Church in the last ten years. Let us hope attitudes change here and a more enlightened attitude towards what a church is eventually prevails. As it is it is a sadly underused, near dead, locked museum of a church. One of very few locked churches in rural Somerset.
Leave a comment in the online visitor's book for the Church of St. Peter in Huish Champflower, Somerset