Twitchen

St Peter's Norman Font and Fabric

Inside St Peter's there is a circular Norman font carved with four kinds of ornament at once — chevron, gadrooned, dogtooth and nail-head — set on a shaft that was lengthened in the 19th century. Pevsner judged that the lengthening spoilt its proportions, and he was probably right, but it is still a twelfth-century font.

The rest of the building is a patchwork of dates. The west tower is 15th century, with a stair and doorway of the same age; three of its bells came through the 1844 rebuild, when J. Hayward reconstructed the nave and chancel in Decorated Gothic and reworked the tower. The chancel was refurnished in 1916, and an oak reredos was carved in 1938 by H. Reade of Exeter. A church was first recorded here in 1340, when it depended on the mother church at North Molton.

Twitchen and North Molton Essentials

Twitchen itself gathers around a junction of single-track lanes, with the church and the old school at its centre and Higher House, Lower House and a handful of cottages close by. A smaller group, Twitchen Mill, sits to the south; Mill Cottage there began life in 1860 as a Methodist chapel with an attached manse. There is a village hall, and a defibrillator fixed to it. Along with the church, that covers the facilities on the spot; for anything else you look to North Molton.

For a pub or a shop you drive the four miles west to North Molton. The Poltimore Inn cooks its own breads, cakes and desserts and holds a Taste of the West Gold award. The menu runs to a Poltimore Pie of slow-cooked beef in Exmoor ale, Exmoor-ale battered fish and chips, lamb shank with mash and mint gravy, a butternut-squash, spinach and cashew crumble, and a burger with bacon, caramelised onion and either Somerset Brie or Monterey Jack. There is a south-facing garden with sculptures in it.

Community, Food and Dark Skies

The pub also has an observatory, where Jo and Pete Richardson of Space Detectives run stargazing evenings under Exmoor's dark skies. Down the road, the community shop and cafe occupies the Old School House, kept going by more than thirty volunteers after the old E Bulled & Sons shop closed in 2022. It sells bread, vegetables, meat, dairy, pies and eggs, and the cafe does cakes, cream teas, pasties and sausage rolls.

Circular Walks and Ridge Barrows

Walkers should pick up the free route sheets at the Poltimore, which set out six circular routes of between six and fifteen kilometres. Some follow the River Mole; others climb Tabor Hill for views west towards Hartland Point and the Taw and Torridge estuary, or pass the surviving waterwheel at Heasley Mill and the beech clump on Bampfydle. On the ridge above the village stand two Bronze Age bowl barrows; one was dug into in 1917 and gave up an urn, flint tools and a necklace of faience beads.

Manor History and Practical Arrival

The manor here was Tucheinge in 1086, held by Queen Edith before the Conquest and by King William after it, its surviving figures recorded together with North Molton's. The nearest station is King's Nympton, eleven miles off, unstaffed and with six parking spaces. Come by car, on the narrow lanes, with the open moor beyond Cussacombe Common filling the view to the east.