The 15th-century chapel at Ayshford stands alone in a small, undulating field next to the Grand Western Canal. It is an unassuming building, facing slightly away from you as though preoccupied with other things, nudged aside by centuries of industrious human activity.
In the early 19th century, engineers and labourers built the canal to ferry goods from Taunton to Tiverton. The canal never had a chance to live up to the grandeur of its title, cut short by the coming of the railways. The little village and the tiny stone chapel are now doubly bypassed, as the M5 thunders past, leaving this quiet stretch empty of traffic, bar the odd pottering moorhen or the Formula One flash of a kingfisher.
