Church Of St Michael

The Church of St Michael is a Roman Catholic parish church, built between 1789 and 1790. An apse was added around 1850, and a south aisle and north porch around 1910. The church is constructed of coursed sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings and quoins, and has a roof of Lakeland slates with stone gable copings and kneelers.

The church comprises a nave, a north porch, and a south aisle, along with a five-sided apse. The porch has double boarded doors and a radial fanlight within a round-headed surround, topped with a low-pitched gable featuring a statue of St Michael in a niche. A small bellcote with arched sides and a cross finial sits above. Round-headed windows are present in the bay to the west of the porch, paired in some sections with one larger single light, featuring two-light windows with cusped tracery. The south aisle has groups of stepped lights, with the central pair of even height, across four buttressed bays. A two-light south sanctuary window is present, alongside taller two-light windows in the apse, each under gables with fleur-de-lys finials; a sill string runs along the apse. The west front features three round-headed openings, the central one higher than the others. The roof has gablets on the east kneelers, a half-octagonal lower apse roof, and a roll-moulded parapet on the aisle.

Inside, the walls are painted plaster over a boarded dado, with ashlar dressings, and feature an arch-braced panelled roof on a coved cornice with wood-corbelled brackets. The arcade has wide, chamfered, two-centred arches on hexagonal piers, with a narrower fifth arch leading to a Lady chapel at the east end. A high, double-chamfered sanctuary arch is present without capitals, and the apse has thick-ribbed vaulting with numerous mouldings and bosses on shafts with chamfered plinths. The east window contains glass by Atkinson Bros., Newcastle, while the flanking windows are in the style of Hardman. Other 19th-century glass is found in the west window and Lady chapel. The altar is decorated in a style reminiscent of mosaic and commemorates Cardinal Wiseman, with low-relief roundels. A west organ gallery was added in the early 20th century. A Gothic-style carved wood balcony in the north wall provides access to a room within the presbytery. Memorials include a plain marble slab to Rev. John Yates, who served as pastor for 33 years and died in 1827, and to Mary Consit, wife of Lt. Com. R.N., who died in 1824.

An attached presbytery, which has been altered, is not considered of significance.