Church Of St Michael

The Church of St Michael is a Grade I listed building located in East Garton. It dates back to the early 13th century, featuring a west tower and chancel from that period, a late 14th-century south aisle and south chancel chapel, and a 15th-century porch. The church is constructed from coursed cobbles with freestone dressings, and the porch is made of brick.

The west tower is two stages high, with a three-bay nave that includes a south aisle and south porch, and a two-bay chancel, which was likely shortened in the 19th century. The tower has a double-chamfered plinth and lancet windows on the first stage, with a single lancet on the belfry's west face. The south aisle and south chancel chapel feature buttresses with offsets and three-light windows adorned with Perpendicular tracery beneath elliptical arches. The south door is round-headed with continuous roll and hollow chamfers. The south porch has a shallow pointed arch supported by grotesque corbels and a hood-mould, along with three blocked lancets on the west elevation and a Lombard frieze in moulded brick beneath the south gable. The chancel has a chamfered plinth and a square-headed priests' door with continuous chamfer. The east window, added in the 19th century, consists of three lights with Perpendicular tracery under a hood-mould and features a coped gable.

Inside, the church has a pointed double-chamfered tower arch with moulded imposts on responds with attached columns. The south arcade consists of three pointed double-chamfered arches on piers with continuous but displaced mouldings. A late medieval screen with open Perpendicular tracery and a brattished top rail is topped by a 19th-century rood and accompanying figures. There is a double-chamfered pointed arch on grotesque corbels leading to the chancel south chapel. The mid-13th-century octagonal font has two trefoil-headed blank openings on each side. Funeral hatchments are displayed on the nave's north wall and the south aisle's south wall. The south porch contains a re-set medieval cross head depicting Christ displaying stigmata. The 19th-century chancel roof is supported by a series of fine moulded plaster corbels, likely medieval in origin, of which only four of the original eight remain. These may have originally been part of the nave, as suggested by an early 19th-century watercolour depicting the west end of the church, and they predominantly feature grotesque heads and masks.