Inside the church carved bench-ends, dating from 1534,[5] depict such pagan subjects as the Green Man and the legend of the men of Crowcombe fighting a two-headed dragon.

The octagonal 2.8 metres (9 ft 2 in) high shaft sits on a base of three steps.

In a memoir of his youth, he writes movingly of his father's death in the family home, when Townsend was 19, and of the care shown the family by the Congregation: They came, the village sexton and the pall-bearers, to the house, bringing with them a simple, old-fashioned bier – a hand-barrow upon which they set my father’s coffin.

Through the village they took him on his last journey to the church where, as evening fell, they laid him before the altar.

[When, the evening before the service, Townsend and one of his sisters paid a last, private, homage to their father] .

peace filled the little mediaeval church, with its narrow pews and oaken benches, lavishly carved at their ends, where we had worshipped at my father’s side.

Beside our pew, in the aisle, a stone slab marked the vault of the Sweeting family .