The Vision in Combe Martin Church

Long ago, in the quiet folds of North Devon, nestled between green hills and the silver ribbon of the sea, stood the village of Combe Martin—unassuming, peaceful, and old enough to have forgotten its own secrets. Its ancient church, St. Peter ad Vincula, had seen centuries pass through its stone arches: births, deaths, whispered prayers, and fading hymns echoing off its medieval walls. But in the waning days of summer 1921, a London artist named Eleanor Whitcombe stepped inside that church expecting only silence and shadow—and found instead a vision that shattered the boundary between past and present. What she saw within those hallowed walls—a procession from another age, a city made of wax, a ceremony lost to time—would become the haunting centerpiece of her life’s work, and the mystery that echoed through Combe Martin long after she had gone.