James Davidson’s East Devon Church Notes

In the mid nineteenth century the Devon antiquarian James Davidson visited all of East Devon’s churches and made detailed notes about their buildings, fabric and fittings. His notes are an eyewitness record of the state of these parish churches at the time before changes in liturgy and fashion in the later Victorian period brought about irreplaceable change. Davidson’s descriptions highlight what has been lost from the archaeological record and allow us to make comparisons with the churches today. In this way they shed light on the history of East Devon’s churches from the Middle Ages onwards and illustrate the ways in which parish churches were transformed in the late nineteenth century. Davidson’s records of memorials and inscriptions in the churches also provide rich and fascinating material for research into local history, social history and family history from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries and illustrate changing attitudes to death and commemoration.