Church of St Michael and All Angels is a Grade II* listed building in the Wigan local planning authority area, England. First listed on 31 July 1996. Church.

Church of St Michael and All Angels

WRENN ID
eternal-nave-equinox
Grade
II*
Local Planning Authority
Wigan
Constituency
Leigh and Atherton MP: Jo Platt (Lab)
Country
England
Date first listed
31 July 1996
Type
Church
Address
Church of St Michael and All Angels, Leigh Road
OS grid reference
SD 664 024
Coordinates
53.51764, -2.5068
Source
Historic England listing

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

Description

The Church of St Michael and All Angels is a parish church built between 1875 and 1877, designed by the architectural firm Paley & Austin for Fletcher Burrows, the owner of Atherton Colliery. The church is constructed from narrow coursed stone with red Runcorn ashlar dressings and features plain tile roofs with coped gables and kneelers. It has a two-stage octagonal fleche over the crossing topped with a tall spire.

The exterior includes a chamfered plinth and a continuous moulded ashlar sill band. The nave has single bay side chapels, a north porch, transepts, a chancel with aisles, a meeting room, and a choir vestry. The west end features a large central buttress between two-light pointed arch windows with reticulated tracery, and above this, there are three small lancets in the gable. The north nave has a timber-framed gable porch with side windows, a single two-light pointed arch window, and two three-light pointed arch windows with lancets. The south nave has a single two-light pointed arch window with reticulated tracery, a large buttress, and two similar three-light windows with lancets.

The side chapels have two-light pointed arch windows to the west and similar three-light windows on the sides. The gabled transepts are flanked by deep buttresses and feature three-light pointed arch windows with reticulated tracery, along with two lancets in the gable above. The chancel includes a vestry to the south with a single lancet and a ringing room to the north with two lancets. The clerestorey has three small lancets under relieving arches on each side, with the north side also featuring a raised stair gable with blind arcading. The west end has a large pointed arch window with five graduated lancets.

Attached to the west is a single-storey meeting room and choir vestry, which has a three-light window to the north and two three-light windows flanked by single two-light windows on the west front. Inside, the church has an open wooden nave roof and two bays of quadripartite stone vaulting in the chancel. The chancel features circular and cluster columns that support double chamfered arches. Notable fittings include a pulpit on a stone base with balusters, an ornate iron altar rail, wooden pews, and choir stalls.

Local climate

Church of St Michael and All Angels sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,040 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 84% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 76% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 37 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 69% of listed buildings. Of these, 19 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

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