Culbone Church, located in the village of CulboneinSomerset, is said to be the smallest parish church in England.[2] The church, dedicated to the Welsh saint Beuno, has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building[3] and the churchyard cross is Grade II*.
The church is recorded in the Domesday Book.[4] The church is probably pre-Norman in origin, with a 13th-century porch and a late-15th-century nave. It was refenestrated and re-roofed around 1810 and the spirelet added in 1888. It underwent further restoration in 1928.[5]
Joan D'Arcy Cooper, psychologist, Yoga teacher, author of Guided Meditation and the Teaching of Jesus,[6] and wife of the potter Waistel Cooper, was organist at the church and is buried in the graveyard.[7] The graveyard also contains a war grave of a soldier of the Welsh Guards of World War II.[8] Sir David Calcutt QC, a barrister and public servant, is buried in the churchyard.
Services are still held despite the lack of access by road.
The nave has box pews, including a Jacobean squire's pew from Ashley Combe House. The interior scale and decoration suggest Anglo-Saxon origins. The east end is restored. There is a small window, carved from a single block of sandstone, outside the north wall of the chancel, with a face on top of the pillar dividing the two window lights. This is probably also Saxon.[9]
The church seats about 30 people, the chancel is 13.5 × 10 feet (4.1 × 3.0 m), the nave 21.5 × 12.33 feet (6.6 × 3.8 m) and the building has a total length of 35 feet (10.7 m).[10]
The church is passed by the South West Coast Path, but drivers must turn off the A39 opposite the village pub, and park where possible on the narrow track. There is then a walk of 1.5 miles (2.4 km) described by Simon Jenkins as "through steep woods of walnut and oak, glorious on a summer's day with the sea glinting through the trees, darkly mysterious and dripping with water in winter".[9]
Layley, Charles G (1985). St. Beuno's Culbone "The smallest complete Parish Church in England". Barnstaple: Aycliffe Press Ltd., on behalf of Culbone Parochial Church Council. ASINB008LP8HRO.
