Walking Ancient Church Paths in Devon

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14 Aug 2026

Walking Ancient Church Paths in Devon

Paths that carried a parish to its church

Long before turnpikes, railways or buses, Devon's worshippers walked. Every parish had its own quiet web of tracks converging on the churchyard gate — from outlying farmsteads, from hamlets, from the market town at the valley's head. Some are still signed as public footpaths; others survive only as a name on a map, a lane called Church Path or Churchtown, or a gap in a hedgebank that seems to lead nowhere in particular.

The grandest of these routes is the Lych Way on Dartmoor, the corpse road that carried the dead of the high moor to Lydford for burial. Most church paths are far humbler, but they share the same logic: the shortest safe line between scattered settlement and consecrated ground, avoiding bog, flood and the steepest slopes. Walking one is a way of reading a parish's history through your boots.

Reading the route as you walk

Start by noticing the ground underfoot. Ancient paths are often hollowed into the hillside, worn down by centuries of feet and hooves into a sunken lane. In Devon, look for hedgebanks — earth banks faced with stone and topped with beech, hazel or thorn — which may be centuries old and are often the clearest surviving boundary of a route.

Useful things to watch for along the way:

Wide stiles and gate gaps built to admit a coffin carried on bearers' shoulders, often called coffin stiles.
Coffin rests — a low stone ledge or built-up bank where a bier could be set down while the bearers rested.
Squeeze stiles of granite or slate, cut narrow to keep livestock in but walkers through.
Yew and holly marking old boundaries and churchyard edges.
Holloways running below the level of the surrounding field, sometimes with exposed roots on the banks.

Boundary stones, crosses and lychgates

Parish boundaries were beaten at Rogationtide, when the minister and people walked the limits, prayed for the crops and, in some accounts, bumped the youngest present against a marker stone so they would remember it. Many of those stones survive: rough granite blocks, sometimes cut with initials or a simple cross, standing where two or three parishes meet.

Wayside crosses once marked routes to church and to market, and a good number were defaced after the Reformation. Note their positions carefully — a cross at a junction or on a ridge is seldom accidental. The lychgate at the churchyard entrance takes its name from the Old English lic, meaning a body: it gave shelter while the priest came out to meet the coffin. Some Devon lychgates are medieval in their timbers, others Victorian rebuildings on older footings.

Hymn heritage along the same tracks

These paths did not only lead to the parish church. They also ran to the chapel, and in Devon the chapel is as much a part of the story as the tower. Bible Christian chapels from the early nineteenth century are dotted across the county, and open-air preaching sites — preaching pits and field corners remembered in local names — survive in tradition if not always in stone.

Inside the older churches, the hymn heritage can be surprisingly tangible. West gallery music, sung by village bands of violins, cellos, clarinets and bassoons from a gallery at the back of the nave, flourished in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries before organs and printed hymn books displaced it. Look for blocked gallery stairs, old music stands, hymn boards still showing numbers, and memorial windows to local choirmasters and Sunday school teachers. A porch notice board, a memorial brass or a brass plate on a harmonium can tell you more about a parish's singing than any guidebook.

Walking with courtesy and care

Rights of way are a privilege and a responsibility. Carry the relevant Ordnance Survey Explorer sheet, and check the definitive map held by the county authority before you set out — routes are occasionally diverted, and church paths in particular often cross private land on permissive or historic terms rather than as public rights of way.

Park where you will not block a gateway, a passing place or a farm entrance.
Close every gate behind you, even if you found it open.
Keep dogs on a short lead around livestock and near ground-nesting birds, and lift them over stiles rather than letting them scramble.
Do not climb dry stone walls or hedgebanks; find the proper stile or gap.
Ask at the farmhouse if a route is unclear. A polite question usually gets a helpful answer and sometimes a shortcut.
Leave stones, lichen, wildflowers and fallen branches where they lie. Take only notes and photographs.

Recording what you find

A small notebook, or a phone set to record, is enough. For each feature, note the date, weather, a grid reference to at least six figures, and what you saw. Photograph lettering, carved initials and mason's marks from several angles, but write down readings too — lichen and shadow hide a great deal. Sketch the plan of a stile, a gate or a cross base if it is unusual.

Back at home, compare your notes with historic Ordnance Survey sheets, tithe maps and enclosure awards held at the county record centre, and with the parish registers. A path that was already described as "old" on an early nineteenth-century map is worth marking well. Over a season or two, your own records will begin to show the shape of devotional travel in your parish — and give the next walker something reliable to follow.

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5 Comments

Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply
- John Abraham says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
  
  I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
  Reply
  - Robert Sonnysays Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
    
    I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
    Reply
Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply

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