Where Demons Fear to Tread: A New Walk Through Tavistock’s Sacred Past
For more than a thousand years, Tavistock’s skyline has been punctuated by towers, spires and sacred spaces. Long before the canal, the great mining boom or the arrival of the Dukes of Bedford, religion was woven into the everyday life of the town.
For Heritage Open Days 2026, local historian and ecclesiastical architecture specialist Sue Spackman has created a brand-new guided walk exploring that remarkable story.
And it has a title that is difficult to resist: Where Demons Fear to Tread.
Taking place on Saturday 12 September at 2pm, the free walk begins at Tavistock Visitor Information Centre in Guildhall Square.
A thousand years of faith
The walk follows the changing face of Christian worship in Tavistock, beginning with the great Benedictine Abbey founded in AD 974 and moving through the medieval and Victorian periods to the churches and congregations of the present day.
But this isn't simply a tour of old buildings.
Sue will use Tavistock's surviving religious architecture to explore the people behind it: the monks, benefactors, stonemasons, clergy, miners, families and worshippers who created, maintained and used these buildings over successive centuries.
Churches were once at the centre of everyday existence. They witnessed baptisms and marriages, funerals and memorials, great celebrations and personal tragedies. They provided education, charity and care for the poor and sick, while their bells and services helped regulate the rhythm of community life.
That makes Where Demons Fear to Tread particularly appropriate to this year's Heritage Open Days theme of Everyday Histories.
Look again at familiar buildings
One of the joys of walking through Tavistock with someone who understands its architecture is discovering just how much we routinely walk past without noticing.
Sue's particular interest in ecclesiastical architecture will help uncover the clues hidden in stonework, windows, towers and decoration, revealing how changing ideas about worship, society and architecture have left their mark on the town.
The journey takes us from the vanished splendour of the medieval Abbey to the striking Victorian church designed by celebrated architect Henry Clutton, the building we know today as Tavistock's Roman Catholic Church and sometimes affectionately call the "Miners' Cathedral".
Its story is particularly fascinating. The building was originally created as a church of convenience for the mining community living around Fitzford and Westbridge, rather than as a Roman Catholic church. Its later change of use adds another layer to the continually evolving religious landscape Sue's walk explores.
More than architecture
Perhaps the most interesting thread running through the walk is the relationship between buildings and people.
A medieval church may be architecturally magnificent, but somebody quarried its stone, somebody carved it and generations of ordinary Tavistock people worshipped within it.
A Victorian church tells us about far more than Victorian Gothic architecture. It can reveal the growth of the town, the arrival of new communities, changing social conditions and the confidence generated by Tavistock's nineteenth-century mining prosperity.
Seen in this way, the churches become historical documents written in stone.
As Sue leads the group through the town, familiar landmarks become chapters in a much larger story stretching back over a millennium.
See Tavistock through different eyes
Where Demons Fear to Tread should appeal not only to those interested in church history.
If you enjoy architecture, archaeology, social history or simply discovering something unexpected about buildings you may have passed hundreds of times, this is a chance to see Tavistock through a very different lens.
And that is really what Heritage Open Days is about: opening doors, looking more closely and discovering the stories hiding in plain sight.
Where Demons Fear to Tread - Led by Sue Spackman - Saturday 12 September 20262pm, starting from Tavistock Visitor Information Centre, Guildhall Square
The walk is completely FREE, but places are limited and advance booking is essential.
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