Church Of Saint Michael

The Church of Saint Michael, built between 1852 and 1853 by Horace Jones, is a Grade II listed church located on Main Street in Cherry Burton. It is designed in the Decorated style and constructed from rock-faced sandstone ashlar with limestone dressings, topped with slate roofs.

The church features a three-stage west tower, a four-bay nave with a north aisle and porch, and a two-bay chancel. The west tower has a moulded plinth and buttresses with offsets, along with a polygonal stair turret at the north-west corner that includes a shouldered door at the ground floor. The first floor has a trefoil-headed window beneath a clock face, a string course, and two pointed belfry openings with trefoil heads, all set beneath a quatrefoil and a running hoodmould with a relieving arch. The cornice is adorned with ball flowers, and the tower is topped with a crenellated parapet.

The nave has a chamfered plinth and a buttress with offsets, featuring three trefoiled lancets under hoodmoulds and three quatrefoils in the clerestory. The north porch includes a pointed opening with two orders on nook-shafts with foliage capitals, all under a hoodmould. It has a raised gable with a cross finial and two two-light pointed windows with geometrical tracery under hoodmoulds with face stops on the south wall.

The chancel also has a moulded plinth and a buttress with offsets, featuring a single trefoil-headed lancet under a hoodmould with face stops to the right, and similar paired lancets to the left. The east window is a pointed three-light design with geometrical tracery under a hoodmould with face stops, depicting a monarch to the left and a bishop to the right. The south wall has similar fenestration.

Inside, the north nave arcade consists of four bays with pointed double-chamfered arches supported by cylindrical piers with moulded bases. The chancel arch mirrors this design and is supported on column corbels. A tall double-chamfered tower arch leads into the tower. The five-sided stone pulpit features carved panels depicting the Paschal lamb beneath an angel holding a riband, with the symbols of the four Evangelists on either side, and a cornice with carved foliage. The chancel's north and south windows have mid-wall shafts and hoodmoulds with leaf carving. The font is a circular tub set on an octagonal pier with a moulded base.