Ottery’s proud boast is that it has the grandest church, apart from the great fane at Exeter, in the county.  It is said that it owes its plan and general appearance to the inspiration of the Cathedral, and there is a striking resemblance on a small scale to that beautiful and original building.  Not that St. Mary’s is a small church; for the size of the town which it dominates it is vast.  Erected during the period when national ecclesiastical art was at its most majestic and imposing, the Early English style of the greater portion of the structure is given diversity by certain Decorated additions.  The beautiful stone reredos is at present empty of figures.  Behind the altar the Lady Chapel, which has a stone screen, contains an old minstrels’ gallery.  The carving here, and the vaulting throughout the church, but especially in the chapel on the north side, is deservedly famous.  During the time of Bishop Grandisson, about 1340, the church was made collegiate.  In 1850 a so-called restoration by Butterfield did much damage, and some of the woodwork then introduced could well be “scrapped” and the church again restored to something of its previous simple dignity.  The painting of the nave and chancel roofs has a peculiarly “cheap” and tawdry effect.

Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have lived in the town for a time, and during the Civil War it was for a month the head-quarters of Fairfax, who turned the church tower into a temporary fortress.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a native of Ottery and the son of one of its vicars.  The poet was only nine when his father died in 1781.  He was then placed in the Bluecoat school and there met his lifelong friend, Charles Lamb.  The theological studies that at first seemed to be his natural bent were no doubt a consequence of his early environment.  Near the church is a house now occupied by Lord Coleridge.  Thackeray spent his school holidays at Larkbeare, the house of his stepfather, Major Carmichael Smith, and afterwards used Ottery ("Clavering St. Mary”) as the scene of part of Pendennis.

The steep, narrow streets around the church have lost many of their picturesque old buildings, though a few of the smaller houses remain in the side turnings.  The pleasant aspect of the town is greatly increased by the beauty of the river and of its banks both above and below the bridge.  The stream is a great favourite with anglers, and Otter trout have a great reputation.

The great high road from Exeter to London passes a short distance north of Ottery and follows the river valley on its way to the old town under the shadow of Dumpdon Hill.  Honiton is of world-wide fame in connexion with the beautiful lace that is still made in the vicinity.  The long and broad High Street is practically all there is of the town, except for a few shops and smaller houses on the way to the railway station.  Save on market day Honiton sleeps the hours away, or seems to do so; possibly there is an amount of business done behind doors, and in a quiet way, to account for the comfortable appearance of the burgesses (for this is a municipal borough).  By reason of its sheltered position from any breeze that may be blowing aloft and its open arms to the sun, the town has, on an ordinary summer’s day, the hottest High Street in England; that fact may partly account for its air of somnolence.