Harberton

This delightful village is regarded as absolutely typical of the South Hams, a place where those two traditional centres of English village life, church and inn, sit comfortably almost side by side. St Andrew’s Church, which is famous for its amazing, fantastically-carved, 15th-century altar screen, has been closely linked to the village hostelry for almost 900 years. Church House Inn, as the name suggests, was originally built to house the masons working on the church around AD1100. Harberton was then  major centre for church administration and a much more important place than Totnes. The inn became the Chantry House for the monks, the civil servants of their time, and what is now the bar comprised their Great Hall, chapel and workshop where they would congregate for a glass of wine.

In 1327, the Abbot handed the property over to the poor of the parish, but it was not until 1950 that it passed out of the Church’s hands altogether. During restoration work ancient plaster was removed to reveal massive beams of fluted mellow oak and a fine medieval screen. Other treasures discovered then, and still in place, were a Tudor window frame and a latticed window containing priceless panes of 13th-century handmade glass. The inn’s ecclesiastical connections are enhanced even more by the old pews from redundant churches that provide some of the seating.