A short off-set cache based at the Church of St Mary, Bicton, a Victorian Gothic Church built in 1850, which stands next to the partial ruins of the Medieval Church that it replaced. Both Churches are Grade 2* listed, and the entrance Lych-gate is separately Grade 2 listed as well.
This new Church for the parish was commissioned and paid for by Louisa, Lady Rolle, who employed J Hayward, a pioneer architect of the Ecclesiological Movement, and it is apparently a good early example of a Church which adheres to their principles.
Once the Church was completed, Lady Rolle then employed A W N Pugin, one of the most famous architects at the time, to deliberately part-destroy the original 15th century Church to become a garden feature/folly which forms part of a Mausoleum complex for the locally very important Rolle family who lived on the estate.
As the Church is no longer used for worship and the inside is now only accessible from within Bicton Park Botanical gardens, it does not qualify under the new guidelines for the Church Micro series, but we feel it deserves a cache anyway.
The given coordinates take you to the Lych-gate and the parking area in front of the Church. You do not need to enter the Botanical gardens to access this - turn off at the waypoint given (N50 39.782 W003 18.807) and then immediately right, down the road between the 2 walls.
From there you will need to answer the following questions:
A = How many clocks can be seen?
B = How many wooden gates are there in the car park area?
C = Number of Fleur de Lys on each gate within the Lych gate.
D = Number of Fleur de Lys along the top of the Lych gate roof.
E = How many large stone crosses on the roof of the ruins?
F = How many ‘chimneys’ on the roof of the ruins?
G = Number of low stone posts around the James family plot in the public churchyard.
H = Number of crosses in the James family plot.
Check sum: total of A – H = 34
The cache is a short walk away at:
N50 39. (G+A)(D-C)(B+E) W003 18.(C+H)(G-F)(B+F)
The gps was a bit inconsistent in this area. We took the original coordinates on a bright sunny day but checked them on a rainy day when placing the cache. The gps did eventually settle down to within 5 feet, but it was very slow to react.