Parish Church Of St Michael And All Angels

Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels, Brimington

This parish church combines a tower of 1796 with a rebuilt main structure from 1847 and a refurbished chancel from 1891. The tower was built at the expense of Joseph Jebb and is one of the rare surviving examples of 18th-century Gothic. The remainder of the church was rebuilt in 1847 by Joseph Mitchell, the Sheffield architect, with the tower heightened at that time. In 1891, the chancel was refurbished by the Derby architectural partnership of John Naylor and George Sale.

The church is built in Decorated style. Materials include ashlar gritstone for the chancel and south side, with coursed squared gritstone used for the north aisle and north wall of the nave. All roofs are slate.

The plan comprises an aisled nave with a lower and narrower chancel to the east, a west tower, a south porch, and a north-east vestry.

The 5-bay nave has 2-light square-headed clerestorey windows with trefoil-headed lights, and larger 3-light windows lighting the buttressed lean-to aisles. The south porch features a double-chamfered arch on shafts and a south doorway with strap hinges. The 3-stage unbutressed tower is crowned with an embattled parapet set with large corner pinnacles. Its lower stage has 2-light windows, the middle stage contains a south clock face and a small west window, and the upper stage has 2-light belfry openings. The chancel displays a 3-light east window and two single-light south windows. A lean-to vestry extends from the north side.

The lofty interior contains nave arcades with tall octagonal piers supporting chamfered arches. The triple-chamfered tower and chancel arches spring from responds with clustered shafts. The roof is constructed with arched-braced trusses rising from tall wall posts set on foliage corbels, with diagonal boarding behind the rafters. The chancel roof is of similar construction. The aisles have roofs with beams and diagonal struts. In the tower base, masonry is exposed, revealing blocked 18th-century windows. Other walls are plastered. The floor is stone-paved, with raised wooden floors beneath the pews.

The font is octagonal in Perpendicular style, topped with a tall 4-tier conical canopy added in 1899 and painted in the 20th century. The nave contains simple benches with moulded square-headed ends and choir stalls featuring pierced quatrefoils in their backs. The tower arch is infilled with a screen erected in 1927, glazed with Perpendicular tracery within the arch opening. Several brass wall plaques are mounted on the walls, the earliest commemorating Henry Audsley (died 1723).

The most significant interior fixture is the war memorial in the south aisle. This is an allegorical sculpture by Charles Sargeant Jagger (1885–1934), the renowned sculptor of war memorials. The memorial depicts an allegorical figure of Victory with inscription panels and is executed in an austere Neoclassical idiom, which was unusual for this sculptor. The figure was originally mounted on a plinth but was later moved when the plinth was stolen; it is now set on a marble corbel on the south side of the east window.

Stained glass includes a window signed by Abbot & Co of Leicester, dated 1932.