Description

SW 84 SW KEA KEA

2/156 All Hallows Church of Saint Kea
30.5.67

GV II*

Parish church, 1894,by C.H. Fellowes Prynne, Donors: John Claude Daubez and Wm, Lovey
Hearle and built by local builder, A Carkeek; replacing plain rectangular church
built 1802 to a design by James Wyatt.
Faced shale rubble walls with dressed granite quoins, copings, jambstones, mullions
and arches. Steep red tile roofs with coped gable ends to nave, chancel, organ aisle
and north transept; outshuts at lower pitch over aisles; hip to north of vestry and
gable end to south porch. Embattled parapet to north porch and to tower with copper
spire. Stone lateral chimney over side wall of chancel serving vestry.
Nave/chancel, under one roof, west tower, north and south aisles, north transept to
chancel vestry in angle, north porch in angle between transept and vestry, south
organ projection at east of south aisle and south porch towards west end. Late
Perpendicular style with Arts and Crafts influence.
3-stage west tower with moulded plinth; weathered diagonal corner buttresses to top
of second stage; moulded cornice to embattled parapet surmounted by broach spire.
Moulded 4-centred west doorway with label and carved stops and quatrefoils to
spandrels. Perpendicular style 3-light window over with transom dividing tracery and
label with carved stops. Upper stage of tower has 2 round-headed louvered and
traceried openings to each side within recessed panel with machicolated cornice.
Otherwise all windows are more conventional Perpendicular style. Octagonal stair
turret to north wall, in angle between tower and north aisle, rising to top of second
stage and with granite roof. West windows to north and south aisle flanking tower
each with 2 lights, tracery and labels with stops. All walls with plinths.
North wall of north aisle has 5 flat-headed traceried windows: wider 3-light window
to middle and buttresses between this and paired similar 2-light windows left and
right. North transept has north gable end with 2 flat-headed 2-light cusped windows.
Adjoining 4-centred doorway to porch, left, with carved stops to label. Vestry set
back to far left is lit by flat-headed window with cusped lights with door and window
to basement, under.
Chancel has north window to left of chimney. East gable end has diagonal corner
buttresses and further buttress incorporating inscribed foundation stone below 5-
light window with wheel tracery to rose. South wall of chancel has single-light
window with tracery. Further single-light windows with tracery to gable end of south
organ projection to far left and right. South wall has gabled entrance porch, left,
2 windows to south aisle and projecting chapel to right with 3 windows. Porch is in
Arts and Crafts style with stone walls on plinth to sill level and timber frame
structure over with coloured leaded cupsed lights between studs as mullions both to
side walls and flanking doorway. 2-light window in gable over with stylized trailing
vine carving to barge board.
South aisle windows, 2-light one to left and 3-light one to right, with buttress
between, are flat-headed with cupsed lights. Organ projection has diagonal corner
buttresses and buttress between windows 2 and 3 from left. All windows have 2 lights
with tracery over within arched openings with stopped labels.
Interior is little altered with walls of polychrome dressed stone brought to course;
limestone arcades of 3 bays, between nave and aisle, with 4-centred moulded arches
enriched with 4-leaf and other carved details over octagonal piers; polychrome
chancel arch on corbels each with 3 shafts plus 2 further arches to aisles from
choir; and original pine roof structure with widely spaced arch-braced trusses. East
window depicts saints including some of Christ's opostles and some Cornish saints
including St Kea and King Arthur. Memorial window in north to those fallen in First
World War with armoured angel in 1 light and other light, with armoured soldier, to
Lieutenant Arthur Donald Sowell, who died August 24th 1916 in the Battle of the
Somme.
Fittings: Norman freestone Bodmin type (Pevsner) font with round bowl on 4 shafts and
carving to 4 faces of the bowl with flared cross to east, lion-like animal to west
and young tree of life to north and older one to south; nowy-headed painted letter of
thanks to Royalist supporters in Cornwall from Charles II, transcribed by George
Withiell 1686. (Both these items from former church of Saint Kea, Old Kea);
otherwise mostly C19 fittings except carved oak bench ends to choir, said to be by
prisoners-of-war circa 1914.
A very impressive building set in unspoilt wooded surroundings with a graveyard with
many C19 graves.

Listing NGR: SW8100642653

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17534524

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  London 6: Westminster (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England): Westminster v. 6
• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)