John Lane (clothier)


John Lane was a wealthy clothier from Cullompton in Devon, remembered today for having built the magnificent Lane Chapel on the south side of St Andrew's Church, Cullompton. Due to a misreading of the inscription on the exterior of his Chapel he was said by Polwhele to have occupied the office of Wapentake Custos, Lanarius,. However no historical evidence supports the existence of such an office and the inscription was later correctly re-interpreted by Smirke.

Lane Chapel

The Lane Chapel is a grand structure of five bays with large windows and a magnificent fan-vaulted ceiling. Building work commenced in 1526, two years before Lane's death, was continued by his widow Thomasine and finished in 1552, according to an inscription on the exterior of the east wall. It is profusely embellished in the interior on the ceiling corbels and bosses with relief sculptures of angels holding Lane's merchant's mark. The exterior walls are embellished with relief sculptures of biblical scenes and of items related to Lane and his trade, such as ships, cloth shears, teasel frames, merchant's marks, monograms, etc. A lengthy relief-sculpted inscription in English in black-letter Gothic script runs around the three exterior walls of the building, low-down beneath the windows.
The Lane Chapel is comparable in many respects to the nearby Greenway Chapel and Greenway Porch in St Peter's Church, Tiverton, built in 1517 by his contemporary fellow merchant John Greenway.

Dispute with Moore family

At the east end of the opposite aisle of Cullompton Church is situated the Moor Hayes Chapel, anciently the property of the Moore family of Moor Hayes, within the parish, lords of the manor of Cullompton. Lane's widow had a dispute with this family concerning their trespassing into the Lane Chapel, which resulted in a law suit heard by the Star Chamber, the record of which is held at the National Archives at Kew, summarised as follows:

Ledger stone

He was buried at the east end of his Chapel, where survives his ledgerstone, in the middle of the aisle and now mostly covered by box-pews and missing the monumental brasses of which only the matrices remain, in the shapes of a man and a woman, wearing a headdress, facing each other, the man on the left and his wife on the right, with two lozenge-shaped heraldic shields above, also missing their brasses. The heads of the figures face the west-end of the Chapel. The ledger line is inscribed in Latin as follows:

External inscription

The following inscription, in parts much worn-away by the elements, is sculpted low-down on the outside wall of the aisle, running round all three sides of the building, with each word cut on detached stones: