Church of St Michael is a Grade II listed building in the County Durham local planning authority area, England. First listed on 17 January 1967. Church.

Church of St Michael

WRENN ID
steep-stone-storm
Grade
II
Local Planning Authority
County Durham
Constituency
City of Durham MP: Mary Kelly Foy (Lab)
Country
England
Date first listed
17 January 1967
Type
Church
Address
Church of St Michael, Front Street, Esh
OS grid reference
NZ 196 440
Coordinates
54.79077, -1.69544
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

The Church of St Michael is a parish church, dating to a 1770 rebuilding on a medieval site. It was extensively altered in 1850, with a south porch added in 1884. The church is constructed of coursed squared sandstone rubble, thinly rendered in places, with an ashlar plinth and dressings. It has a roof of graduated Lakeland slates, and the porch roof is stone-flagged with stone gable copings. The building consists of a nave with a south porch and transept, and a chancel with a north porch.

The gabled porch has a chamfered, cusped two-centred-arched surround to a boarded door with ornamental hinges, within a shafted, roll-moulded arch with a leaf-stopped dripmould, side buttresses, and a stone cross finial. The nave has a Perpendicular style three-light north window, two cusped south windows, and a two-light west window with bar tracery. A blocked spherical-triangular window sits above the west window, beneath a gabled bellcote with a fleur-de-lys finial. The transept has a two-light Decorated-style window under a gabled roof with side buttresses, and paired lancets in the east wall, with an external chimney-stack at the south-east. The chancel has a four-light Perpendicular-style south window, and a three-light Decorated-style east window. The north porch has paired cusped ogee lights, and the north front features a shouldered arch and lights; an external chimney stack is also present. Stone cross finials and medieval-style chimneys are visible.

The inner porch contains trailing iron foliage decoration. The interior has painted plaster with ashlar dressings, a boarded dado beside the pews and a boarded, panelled roof on a cornice, with Tudor-flower bosses on the chancel panels. A chamfered transept arch is accompanied by a similar inner arch on corbelled round shafts. A low, square-headed piscina, slightly-chamfered, is set into the south chancel wall. Features include hollow-chamfered rerearches and a two-centred-arched vestry door. An organ is located in the transept. Stained glass in the south nave window is by G.J. Baguley, and the north nave war memorial is by Atkinson Bros., both of Newcastle upon Tyne. A Lee memorial in the transept is by H.M. Barnet of the same town. A plaque in the nave, signed Walker and Emley, is dated 1884 and commemorates the gift of the porch and transept window in memory of a former vicar. An Early 14th-century effigy, against the south wall of the transept, has slightly-eroded costume detail; a headless effigy of a child wrapped in a christening cloth rests on the south window-sill of the transept.

Local climate

Church of St Michael receives an average of 830 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 53% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 99% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 46 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 87% of listed buildings. Of these, 28 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

More on this building

Sign in or create a free account to unlock:

  • No EPC on record for this property
  • No sale records on file
  • No related consent applications matched
  • Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
  • Flood risk assessment
  • Radon risk assessment
  • Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Create free account

Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.

Similar buildings

The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.

Nearby listed buildings

  1. Gate Piers at Entrance to Yard of Esh Hall Farm Grade II* 135 m
  2. Farm Building North West of Esh Hall Grade II 270 m
  3. Wall and Piers North East of Esh Hall Grade II 285 m
  4. Esh Hall Grade II 301 m
  5. Esh Glebe House Grade II 336 m
  6. Church of St Michael Grade II 746 m
  7. Eshe Laude War Memorial Grade II 751 m
  8. Stables Loft and Carriage Shed to Church of St Michael Grade II 765 m
  9. Guidepost at Junction with Greenland Road Grade II 837 m
  10. Biggin Farm Cottage Grade II 1.6 km