Church Of St Michael

Church of St Michael

Anglican church comprising a nave built on the foundations of a previous church by Robert Roper in 1823, with tower and spire added by Edmund Sharpe in 1844, and a chancel rebuilt probably by Joseph Hansom in 1853 to make the altar visible from the nave. The church is constructed in sandstone ashlar with slate roofs.

The unaisled nave consists of 6 bays with Early English details. The second bay from the west on both sides is occupied by a slightly projecting porch under a gable. All other bays have lancet windows with chamfered reveals set under a continuous hoodmould and between gabled buttresses which are square below and semi-octagonal above the offset. The west windows of the aisles have 3-light windows with Perpendicular panel tracery and were probably inserted when the tower was built.

The tower is built in 4 stages with angle buttresses. It features a deeply moulded west door, a 4-light window of panelled tracery set above an embattled string course and below a quatrefoil frieze, a plain panel for a clock face, and 2-light belfry openings on each face. The crocketed octagonal spire rises to 150 feet, with 3 tiers of 2-light lucarnes and is set behind an embattled parapet with corner pinnacles supported by 4 small flying buttresses.

The aisled 3-bay chancel has Decorated details, with a 5-light east window featuring reticulated tracery in a deeply moulded reveal, possibly from the 14th century. The aisles have 2-light windows with varied tracery. Much of the stonework of the east and north walls of the chancel is reused.

Interior

The wide nave has a flat-panelled ceiling apparently supported on 7 very shallow wooden braces whose spandrels are decorated with quatrefoils. The intersection of ribs is embellished with gilded leaves and occasionally heads. Of three original galleries, only the west one now survives, with a Gothic-panelled front supported on slender cast-iron piers of quatrefoil section, approached by two flights of stairs with open strings and slim turned balusters. The original west door now leads into the tower. A richly moulded chancel arch features moulded capitals and filleted shafts.

The chancel has aisles, now vestries, closed off by glazed screens with ogee arches and ball flowers. The chancel roof is open with 4 trusses whose braced collars support crown posts and upper collars, with three tiers of wind braces and decoration of stencilled flowers.

The church contains several notable fittings: churchwardens' box pews east of the south door with Gothic details and poppy heads, dated 1770 on a brass plate which is probably not in situ; a 14th-century tomb recess in the south-east corner with pierced curvilinear tracery; a wall tablet above the recess with Baroque scroll work above a winged skull framing a long epitaph in partly rhyming couplets commemorating Thomas Clifton of Lytham Hall who died in 1688; another wall tablet nearby with a medallion representing the Resurrection commemorates Richard Bradkirk of Bryning Hall (died 1813); a mid-18th-century former entrance to the France family vault east of the north doorway, featuring a semi-circular arch with moulded architrave and block keystone with leaves in spandrels, set between engaged Ionic columns carrying a broken pediment and a coat of arms within Rococo cresting; and a two-tier brass chandelier bought in 1725 for 11 guineas from Brown of Wigan, suspended over the nave.