The Church Of St Michael

The Church of St Michael is a parish church built between 1857 and 1859 by G G Scott. It is constructed primarily of red brick with blue brick detailing and a tile roof. The church comprises a four-bay nave and an apsidal chancel. A weathered and beaded sandstone plinth runs along the base of the walls, which feature diaper work and blue brick bands. The nave’s two-light windows have shaft mullions, trefoil heads, and quatrefoils in the window head, with shafts and foliated capitals. Inter-window buttresses are capped with nook shafts and poppyheads. A large gabled south porch features shafts to the quoins and entrance, an internal three-shaft arcade with a window on each side, and an oak door with elaborate strap hinges. A round inset panel depicting Christ blessing is set into the gable apex of the porch. The chancel is shaft-arcaded with trefoil-headed single light stained glass windows in alternate arches, a moulded sill band, flat bands of decorated tiles at shaft cap level, and a moulded corbel table at the eaves. Corner buttresses on the northwest corner of the nave support a partly corbelled, bartizan-like octagonal bell turret with a stone roof. The west gable of the nave has a rose window flanked and surmounted by round Holy Family and angel inset panels. The building features a plain bevelled, lead-lined eaves gutter cornice, gable copings with gablet kneelers, a crested ridge, and gable cross finials.

Inside, the walls are of white brick with bands of red brick extending up to the polychrome window arches, with diaper work above. Hexagonal piers flank the chancel arch, flanked by single marble shafts with rings and foliated capitals. Features include a stone pulpit with marble angle shafts and a foliated cornice, carved oak choir stalls with poppyheads, a Last Supper and linenfold panelled reredos, matching linenfold wall panelling in the chancel up to window height, a cantilevered oak organ case, marble shafts flanking the chancel windows, mullions for the nave two-light windows, an ornate brass lectern, a stone carved baptismal font with lamb, lion, angel, and bird motifs, and an oak cover. The chancel and apse have a scissor-braced rafter roof with boarded rafters. The nave roof has a mansard profile with rafters changing pitch at purlin level and again boarded on their upper surface. It includes three arch-braced trusses supported by carved stone corbels.