Church Of St Michael

The Church of St Michael is an Anglican church located in Headingley, Leeds, built between 1884 and 1885 by architect JL Pearson. It is designed in the Gothic Revival style and constructed from coursed squared gritstone with tiled roofs. The layout includes a nave with a large clerestory, a chancel, north and south transepts, and north and south aisles.

The exterior features a tall west tower topped with a thin broach spire and adorned with pinnacles. The east gable of the chancel is turreted and has two tiers of three lancet windows. At the west end, there is a shallow porch situated between buttresses, which contains double doors with decorative hinges, attached triple columns, and dogtooth mouldings. A statue of St Michael is positioned at the apex of the pitched roof, above a four-light window with quatrefoil tracery. The three-stage tower above the porch has paired two-light windows and a tall stone-louvred belfry stage.

Inside, the church has a three-bay nave, shallow transepts, and a three-bay chancel. The nave is supported by cylindrical columns, with attached columns on the inner face of the walls that rise between the clerestory windows to plain chamfered arches, which divide the timber roof. The floor of the nave is laid with red and black tiles, while wooden blocks are used in seating areas, and the chancel features a polychrome marble floor.

Notable interior features include an alabaster octagonal font with carved biblical scenes on short granite columns, an alabaster pulpit designed by Pearson that includes preaching figures and similar short columns, and a wrought-iron screen leading to the chancel and south aisle chapel. The lectern, made by Hardman Powel and Co. of Birmingham, has a polychrome marble base and brass figures of lions and angels, inscribed with 'TO THE GLORY OF GOD, EASTER 1889'. The reredos, created by Temple Moore in 1905, is made of carved, gilded, and painted wood, depicting figures of Christ in Glory flanked by St George and St Michael, surrounded by saints of the early English church.

A brass plaque at the west end of the church commemorates significant dates: the memorial stone was laid on 29 September 1884 by the Bishop of Ripon, the church was consecrated on 8 July 1886, the top stone of the spire was fixed on 22 October 1890, and the reredos was dedicated on 14 December 1905. The Church of St Michael is a large and impressive structure.