Devon has more medieval churches than almost any other English county, and most of them stand within a short drive of a main road. The reward for a slow visit is not only architecture: it is the chance to read centuries of ordinary local life in carved oak, granite and slate — and to record what you find so that it survives for the next generation.

Why Devon's churches reward a slow visit

Parish churches here grew out of the wealth of wool, tin and fishing. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, congregations rebuilt small Norman naves as roomy aisled churches, and later generations added towers, porches and painted interiors. Because so many villages stayed small, much of that work was never replaced. You will regularly find a fifteenth-century rood screen, a carved wagon roof and a Norman font in a church that seats eighty people on a Sunday.

Practically, most churches are open daily from roughly nine in the morning until dusk. A few are kept locked, with a keyholder named on a notice beside the door. Always read the noticeboard before you start, and remember that Sunday mornings are for services, not for exploring the chancel.

Reading the building: what to look for first

• Towers — Devon towers are usually square, battlemented and topped with four pinnacles. Look for carved bands, flushwork panels and a stair turret, often on the north side.
• Rood screens — Devon retained more medieval screens than any other county. Look for fan vaulting along the top, painted panels of saints, and traces of red, green and gold beneath later varnish.
• Wagon roofs — ribs, bosses and carved angels. Bring binoculars; the finest work sits high above your head.
• Bench ends — carvings of foxes, owls, mermaids, ships and saints. Many faces were knocked off in the sixteenth century, so a complete one is a treat.
• Fonts and porches — round Norman fonts with cable moulding, and scratch dials or mass dials cut into the porch wall or a south door jamb.
• Stone — local rubble with granite dressings across most of the county, with cream Beer stone used for finer carving in East Devon and Ham Hill stone near the Somerset border.

In the churchyard: what the stones tell you

Gravestones from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries amount to a census of the parish. Slate, shipped into north and mid Devon from Cornwall, holds crisp lettering for centuries; granite and limestone often weather faster. Before about 1700, most people were buried under nothing more than a wooden marker or a churchyard cross, so the earliest headstones are rare and worth noting.

• Symbols — winged souls, hourglasses, skulls, crossed bones and spades are common before 1800. Urns, weeping willows, laurel wreaths, open books, anchors and compasses follow later.
• Wording — occupations, place names and causes of death; "wife of", "son of", and long verse epitaphs typical of the eighteenth century.
• Shape and position — flat ledger stones, chest tombs, and headstones generally set facing east.
• Dates and ages — a cluster of deaths in one month may point to an epidemic; several infants in one family says a great deal about the times.

Recording details properly and respectfully

Anything you write down is only useful if it can be trusted later. Work outwards from the church building, one row at a time, keeping a running note of stone numbers.

• Use a pencil and a notebook, or a phone set to record. Pencil survives rain.
• Transcribe inscriptions line by line, exactly as cut, using square brackets for letters you cannot read.
• Photograph the whole stone with a small scale in shot — a folding rule or a card marked in centimetres — then take a close-up of the lettering.
• Note the date of your visit, the stone's position in the churchyard, whether it leans, sinks or is broken, and its height in metres and centimetres.
• Never brush, scrape, chalk, flour or wash a stone, and never take a wax or foil rubbing. Lichen is part of the monument, and damage is permanent.
• Ask the parish first. On consecrated ground, anything intrusive — lifting, moving, deep cleaning or clearing vegetation — needs diocesan permission.
• Offer copies of your records to the county historic environment record and the local archive, where they will be catalogued and kept.

Etiquette, wildlife and planning a church-crawling day

• Keep to paths where you can; churchyards are still used for burials. Do not sit or picnic on stones, and close gates behind you.
• Dogs on leads, no drones, and quiet voices if a service or a funeral is under way.
• Churchyard yews, lichen-rich stones and unmown summer grass support wildflowers and insects. The best time to read lettering is late winter and early spring, when foliage is low and the sun stays low too.
• Plan three or four churches in a day, not eight. Allow about forty-five minutes inside and half an hour in the churchyard.
• Carry an Ordnance Survey map: lanes are narrow, satellite navigation coverage is patchy in the valleys, and passing places matter.

Devon's churches and churchyards are quiet, free and open to anyone. Visit slowly, write clearly, and be careful with what you touch.