Christow

Inn Fires and a Shop Reborn

The Artichoke Inn stands on Village Road with a thatched roof, original beams and open fires, and it has been an inn since the 17th century, though some sources push the date back to the 12th and leave it there without much explanation. It sits at the centre of Christow and does the things a village pub should. The kitchen serves Tuesday to Sunday, and the standouts are the stone-baked pizzas, which reviewers keep describing as larger than expected, and the homemade burgers, of which the bacon blue burger gets singled out. Wednesday is steak night, Thursday is curry night, and the Sunday roast has been called phenomenal by at least one person who left a review. There's a garden for summer and a wood burner for winter. Dogs are welcome, and the real ales are, by common account, in perfect condition.

Until recently the pub was doing a lot of the village's work, because Christow had lost its shop. That changed on 5 November 2024, when the Christow Community Shop opened in a converted portacabin in the Teign Valley Community Hall car park. Villagers raised over £70,000 to do it, with help from Ashton, Bridford and Doddiscombsleigh, and it now runs on more than forty volunteers selling local food, groceries, hot drinks and snacks. "It took a village to build a village shop," as Orchardlea Foods put it.

Carved Stone and the Teign Valley

The Church of St James the Apostle is Grade I listed and mostly 15th century, though the Norman font is 12th and the west tower, with its eight bells, was added in 1630. It was originally dedicated to St Christina, which is where the village gets its name — Christenstowe, then Christow. Pevsner recorded the rood screen as a fine five-bay example of his "A-type." The nave roof is studded with carved bosses. On the threshold there's a memorial stone to the parish clerk Nathaniel Bussell, dated 1631.

Christow sits just inside the eastern edge of Dartmoor National Park, in the Teign Valley, twelve miles south-west of Exeter, among wooded hills and streams with the ridge of Bennah Hill above it. There's a walk that leaves from the Artichoke and comes back to it — 3.5 miles through woodland and field paths, muddy and bouldery, with a stream crossing that Great British Life advises you simply wade: "There are stepping stones for the unwellied, but they may be very slippery, so it's safer to wade." In winter the views open across to Dartmoor's tors and the white tower of Haldon Belvedere.

Arriving without the Railway

You'll need a car. The Teign Valley Railway reached Christow in 1903 and closed to passengers in 1958; the nearest mainline trains are now at Exeter. The village sits just off the B3193, about four and a half miles from Chudleigh and the A38.

Lady Exmouth Falls

Just outside the village are Canonteign Falls, where Lady Exmouth Falls drops about seventy metres — England's highest man-made waterfall, built on an estate the Pellew family bought in 1811 with naval prize money.

Courts and Skate Park

The tennis courts and skate park are behind the community hall, next to the shop that took a village to build.